Re: Any plans for a 100% wm syntax compatibility?

Demetrios Kyriakis wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> are there any plans to support 100% "wm" (well I mean Velocity :) ) syntax?
> I mean 100% in the template files (maybe with some switch property in the
> config of FM)?
> 
> I think this would ease greatly the move to FM: it would pose no risks for
> the users since they would have no conversion work, so trying FM would mean
> just chaning a JAR (for most cases).
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Demetrios.
> 

We have a conversion utility that works pretty well for just changing 
the syntax. Actually, the most recent version of it (which should be up 
on our website but isn't) can be got via svn.

svn co 
https://freemarker.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/freemarker/tools/vel2ftl

You can run ant at the top level of the checkout and it will build you 
an executable jar file that converts .vm to .ftl syntax.

As Daniel pointed out, you do have the problem that the semantics 
differ, but this still gets you a lot of the way there.

Of course, Velocity syntax could be supported, I guess, by reading in 
the .vm template file and using the above code to convert it to .ftl and 
then reading it in. You could write a custom TemplateLoader that does 
this for the .vm extension, I suppose. That would support Velocity 
syntax, but with FreeMarker semantics, on nulls or missing values and 
how macro parameters are passed and so on.

And that is not much incremental work. The problem is in the difference 
in semantics, and also, that some of freemarker's most appealing 
features would not be available, since you can't express them using 
Velocity syntax.

JR

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