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

Daniel Dekany wrote:
>> 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. 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 :]
>     ...
>   [#.]
>
>   or [#. foo], optionally.
>
>   

How about

#foo [aaaaaaa
aaaaa#if condition [aaaaa
aaaa
]aaaa
]aaaa

Or perhaps as cryptic as Velocity (sometimes).



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