Re: Powered By FreeMarker

Hey Daniel, 

Thanks for the feedback. We are updating/improving our documentation as we speak.

The XML type aware wrapper would be hard for us to implement (I think...) because we don't know which elements our users will supply. Currently we only require that the user supplies: 

    <Recipient>
        <EmailAddress>...</EmailAddress>
    </Recipient>

but users can include as many other elements after the EmailAddress element as they choose, of any name that they would like. This gives our users the ability to include their data without having to map to our system but does cause some confusion since everything becomes a string.

My bad on the description length but I simply modeled it after the Alfresco snippet which is a bit longer than the 250 limit. Please find below a shortened description.

Thanks again, 

Michael Robinson



Description:

MessageGears provides Email APIs and SMTP services. MessageGears email templating system is powered by XML documents which become the model to FreeMarker templates. Each message is then merged, delivered, and tracked to optimize inbox placement.


On Jun 29, 2012, at 4:24 AM, Daniel Dekany wrote:

> Friday, June 29, 2012, 6:31:18 AM, Michael Robinson wrote:
> 
>> Hey Guys, 
>> 
>> MessageGears is an email service that uses FreeMarker to empower
>> uses to create dynamic email templates and we would love to be added
>> to the "powered by" section of the site. Below please find our description of our integration.
>> 
>> If you have any questions or need any additional information then please just let me know.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Michael Robinson
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.messagegears.com/
>> 
>> MessageGears provides Email APIs and SMTP services in the cloud.
>> MessageGears dynamic email templating system is powered by users
>> submitting extensible XML documents which then become the object
>> model to their FreeMarker email templates. Each email message is
>> then merged, delivered, and tracked to optimize inbox placement. 
> 
> OK. But the description should be less than 250 characters.
> 
> I think http://www.messagegears.com/docs/dynamic-email-content/ should
> be improved (after a very quick look anyway):
> 
> - You have this awkward situation where dates and numbers come as
>  strings (because the source is XML) so the user has to use
>  ?date("yyyy-MM-dd") and ?number all over, and I belive it should be
>  explained what's going on there. Like, you show ${Recipient.Number}
>  vs ${Recipient.Number?number}, with the same output, and the user
>  may wonder what's the difference then. (BTW, this could be improved
>  by a customized XML wrapper, which knows which XML elements are
>  numbers and which are dates, but I admit that needs development
>  efforts and some FreeMarker knowledge.)
> 
> - You have <#setting locale="${Recipient.Locale}"> there. Should be
>  <#setting locale=Recipient.Locale>... or was there any type-related
>  problem with that? I'm asking because writing <#foo bar="${baz}"> is
>  a probably the most frequent FreeMarker mistake (JSP-ism), so you
>  better don't give users the bad idea.
> 
> - Where you generate HTML emails, users should know about ?html, also
>  combined with #escape.
> 
> - The "official" FreeMarker page is freemarker.org, not the sf.net page.
>  (You are using the last in the links.)
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Daniel Dekany
> 


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