Re: [Freemarker-devel] interested in feedback with new template engine

On Jun 29, 2008, at 11:32 PM, Joe Hudson wrote:

> [sorry if this appears more than once - I sent it from the wrong  
> account previously and canceled the message so I don't think it will]
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> I have created a new template engine to address some missing  
> functionality that I have wanted in FreeMarker for a long time.  I  
> would really appreciate feedback from anyone that would like to kick  
> the tires.  It is called ZipScript and can be found at http://www.zipscript.org 
>  (which will take you to the googlecode project page).

Did you start this from scratch, or did you fork FreeMarker?

> Also, I am not terribly good at writing friendly documentation and  
> would appreciate anyone that would like to participate in the growth  
> of this project with me especially in the docs area...
>
> Some of the features that I have address are:
>
> - can define macro parameters as nested components (which gives you  
> the ability to create complex UI components)

I'm not sure I understand what does this mean. For FM 2.4, we do have  
curried macros though, if that's what you had in mind.

>
> - added a formatting character '|' so you can do stuff like $ 
> {myDate|"MMM dd, yyyy"} or ${myDate|short}

Did you find writing ${myDate?string("MMM dd,yyyy")} in FreeMarker too  
verbose?

>
> - added boolean and object evaluators so you can get more than just  
> merge a template with an object model to get the string results

I see - so you're sort-of moving toward a generic programming language  
here, aren't you, by being able to return non-text values from  
templates?

Attila.

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