Re: [FreeMarker-user] Ideal tag syntax; what's your take on it?

> Friday, June 10, 2011, 8:36:15 AM, Denis Bredelet wrote:
> 
> [snip]
>> The real advantage of Velocity syntax is that it uses line-ending as
>> a delimiter. That sometimes complicates white space handling but it is visually nicer.
> [snip]
> 
> AFAIK, you don't have to break the line after Velocity directives.
> It's enough if you close the parentheses, or if there are none, if
> it's followed by an unexpected character.
> 
> Beside, those problems of the Velocity syntax can be solved easily
> (like, require () even if the directive has no parameters). So then I
> read this as you are in favor of Velocity look-and-feel in general.

I am in favor of the Velocity *directive* look and feel in HTML or XML templates. 

> 
>>> How FTL is still similar to SGML:
>>> 
>>> - You have to add a "/" to each empty-directive tag ([@foo /]), but
>>> you don't have to add anything if nested content follows
>>> ([@foo]...). Isn't that anti-intuitive and often inconvenient?
>>> Nothing but SGML has this strange upside-down logic (I think).
>>> 
>>> Also, to complicate things... there are those who are more equal
>>> than others. For a built-in directive you can write something like
>>> [#assign x = 1] instead of [#assign x = 1 /], since FreeMarker knows
>>> if they can have nested content or not.
>> 
>> In my opinion the issue is not with the closing of an empty
>> directive, but with the end of directive syntax. The slash is short
>> (1 character) but cryptic, it is not clear it means "end". My
>> suggestion is to introduce an alternative syntax. Maybe:
>> 
>> [@foo @end]
>> [@foo]
>> [@end]
>> 
>> Equivalent to [@foo][/@]
>> 
>> (May need to use #end instead of @end because the latter is valid
>> directive name AFAIK so it wouldn't be backward-compatible)
> 
> We don't really care about BC in this discussion. The problem is
> rather that [@foo @end] is awfully verbose, also [#foo #end]. How
> about this:
> 
>  [#foo :]
>    ...
>  [#end]
> 
> and if you don't have nested content
> 
>  [#foo]
> 
> So the colon makes it obvious that we have started the nested content
> and so there's a matching @end somewhere. You can also extend the
> concept with:
> 
>  [#foo :]
>    ...
>  [#end-foo]
> 
> so that optionally, you can tell what directive are you closing.
> 
> But my problem is that while "end" is self-explanatory, it's too
> verbose. That verboseness is OK for a Velocity-ish syntax, because
> that don't have the [...]-s to help separating tags for the static
> text. But here... it's "[@end" is too much IMO.

I really don't mind the verboseness here. Keep [/@] as a shortcut. 

> Anyway, what I was
> originally thinking about is:
> 
>  [#foo {]
>    ...
>  [}]
> 
>  or [} #foo], optionally.
> 
> and
> 
>  [#foo]
> 
> Quite obvious. I was happy with the idea, until I tried it in real
> templates, and there I found it looks kind of noisy, because the {}-s
> and [] looks to similar. That's maybe nit-picking, but... I have found
> that despite it's *weird* and has steeper "learning curve", this looks
> better after you get used to it:
> 
>  [#foo :]
>    ...
>  [#.]

Ok but if we use colon for named arguments it will clash. How about:

[#foo]
...
[#.]

[#foo.]

> 
>  or [#. foo], optionally.

-- Denis. 

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