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

Monday, June 30, 2008, 11:12:55 AM, Attila Szegedi wrote:

> 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?

(Scratch AFAIK...)

>> 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.

Well it was discussed a lot earlier, although certainly only me and
Joe was responsive in that thread. I count this thing among those that
the two main FM guys (or of three) don't get for unexplained reasons,
like #nested earlier. Anyway, here you will find an example:

http://code.google.com/p/zipscript/wiki/FreemarkerComparison

Besides, I disagree the *way* Joe has addressed the issue, unless it
was changed since then when I last saw it. (Joe, did it changed, did
you addressed the discussed "problems"?) But surely it addresses the
issue at least. (And yeah, as you could find out without saying, :) in
my vapor war I addressed it too, differently. That's why I have the
ground to disagree, of course.)

>> - 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?

Note that I do, for ages. (This you may already know, since I have
proposed the nearly same thing for several occasions here. It even
used "|".)

>> - 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?

It never hurts... But what is a template? An expression that evaluates
to a string (or XML DOM).

> Attila.

-- 
Best regards,
 Daniel Dekany


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
It's the best place to buy or sell services for
just about anything Open Source.
http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php