Re: Freemarker 2.3.3 release, Java 1.5

Wednesday, June 29, 2005, 2:50:54 AM, Tilman Sommer wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm using FMPP/Freemarker for about 6 months now and like it more
> and more.  :)
> Except the fact, that Freemarker templates are not XML compatible. :(
> (Why didn't they use a namespace for example?)

The reason for not using XML syntax is that it would be very verbose.
Like, compare:

  <#if x>...</#if>

  <fm:if test="${x}">...</fm:if>

Also note that certain tasks can't be solved easily with keeping the
document well-formed XML, like try to do these:

  <p<#if forceAlignment> align="left"</#if>>...</p>
  
  <${elementName}>...</${elementName}>

Of course some special construct could be introduced for that (like in
XSLT), but then FTL wouldn't be a general purpose text generator,
because it had to parse the static-text parts too as XML.

Or what do you mean with "XML compliance" and why do you need that?

> Q1: is FMPP 0.9.9 compatible with Freemarker 2.3.3?

Sure, since 2.3.3 is compatible with all previous 2.3.x-es.

> Q2: For XPath support, what are the plans to accomodate the changes in
> J2SE 5.0 (org.apache classes moved to 
> com.sun.org.apache.package.internal)? Or has this nothing to do with
> XPath?

It should still work, but you have to install Xalan, exactly like with
J2SE 1.3 or J2SE 1.2. However, Jaxen has improved a lot in the last few
months, so maybe you are better with Jaxen 1.1 beta 7 now. Jaxen was
always better with FreeMarker than Xalan because of its more powerful
public API, just it had several serious bugs (mostly XPath compliance
problems).

> Thanx
> Tilman

-- 
Best regards,
 Daniel Dekany



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