Re: Proposal: <#p expression> for printing values that deliberately store markup

The proposal looks well thought out. 

I will just say that I approve it. 

What is the difference between macro and function then?

-- Denis. 

> I want to able to tell this simple rule of thumb to users:
> 
> - Always put the template into <#escape x as x?html>, or when it
>  becomes available, just turn on global escaping and forget about it.
> 
> - Print values that aren't meant to contain HTML markup with
>  `${expression}`. These will be automatically escaped.
> 
> - Print values that meant to store HTML markup with
>  `<#p expression>`. These will not be automatically escaped, ever.
> 
>  In general, what you print with <@...> or <#...>-s (i.e., with
>  macros or directives) is never escaped. They meant to generate
>  markup, and that's why they look like HTML tags.
> 
> You may wonder why not `${expression?noescape}` or something like that.
> For two reasons:
> 
> - It violates the rule of thumb shown above. It's something that's not
>  escaped, meant to generate markup, yet doesn't look like <...>. #p
>  is true to the above idea.
> 
>  BTW, there's this confusion in many heads about what's the
>  difference between a #macro (or a directive) and a #function, and
>  why you can't call macros inside expression, and so on. The reason
>  of the distinction is basically the above rule of thumb. Only this
>  rule wasn't communicated or even executed clearly so far.
> 
> - What exactly would be the result of `expression?noescape`? If it's
>  just an FTL string, how would ${...} know that it must not be
>  escaped? Or what's the result of `foo + bar?noescape`? In a new
>  language I probably would have plain-string VS markup-string type,
>  but adding it to a 10+ years old language would probably be a too
>  brutal change.
> 
> You may also wonder what's the problem with:
> 
>   <#noescape>${expression}</#noescape>
> 
> Well, it's far too ugly for a basic task like this. Other than it's
> annoying to type and read back, if many interpolations would print
> values that are already markup in a certain template, the author will
> possibly feel tempted to remove #escape and use ${exprssion?html} on
> the places where the expression value needs to be escaped. Then in
> some templates you have to write ?html, in some you must not write
> that or you do double-escaping... that's messy and dangerous and
> invalidates the rule of thumb shown earlier.
> 
> Comments/ideas?
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Daniel Dekany
> 
> 
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