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

Jonathan Revusky-3 wrote:
> 
>>> But.... even if this bridged thing is better than Velocity, it is so 
>>> inferior to using FreeMarker itself, it's not funny. No namespaces, no 
>>> local variables, no macros with blocks, no visit/recurse machinery for 
>>> processing XML, no built-ins....
>>>
>>>From a programmer's point of view you are right, but for the
non-programmer
>> user all
>> those concepts are not important. They only care about the simple syntax
>> (V.. happens
>> to have).
> 
> Well, the fact of the matter is that if you use FreeMarker as if it was 
> Velocity, the same feature set, it is not particularly more difficult -- 
> if at all. And if it is more difficult, it's pretty marginal, it's not 
> like the difference between Visual Basic and Java, say.
> 
> It amounts to having to write:
> 
> <#if x=y>...</#if>
> 
> instead of #if ($x==$y)....#end
> 
> or <#set foo="bar"> instead of #set ($foo = "bar")
> 
> I admit that the opening and closing <..> could seem more difficult, but 
> we're talking about people who are already editing HTML, aren't we?
> 
No, we aren't. The users write *no* HTML and have no idea what that is (even
if most 
of them use the Internet for a while - most people don't bother to do a
"view page source" in their browser :) ).

I was not from the begining in the project , but from the protocols(and
meetings) I can see that the customer (decision makers + IT people + few
representative workers) were presented serveral alternatives: it was choosen
based on:
#1 - what engine has the required features (most of them had it, since it's
used only a subset even from Velocity)
#2 - what's the simplest syntax for the workers - end users (to reduce
training costs I suppose - since the workers were allowed to express such a
wish :) ). They got samples in all alternatives and had enough time to
analyze them. There was even a questionaire: and they found V.. (*.vm) was
the simplest one (and this with a pretty high percentage). 


Demetrios.

-- 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freemat/
http://freemat.sourceforge.net
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