Re: push-style templating - an xml-like way to process xhtml

[Tino Wildenhain]

Terrence Brannon wrote:

Tino Wildenhain wrote:

An opposite approach to this form of dynamic HTML production is called
push-style templating, as coined by Terence Parr:

Hm.

"<a href=$attr.url$>$attr.title$</a>
$if(attr.active)$
$attr.submenu:menuItem()$
$endif$"

This looks ugly to me.

It looks ugly to me too.

Why not just using well tested TAL, which is
also available for a number of languages?

well, to me, TAL has to be learned. It is a language. Why is this an issue? Let me answer: I already know Python. I already know the XHTML standard. I do not wish to learn TAL. If you know Python, and can read the API to a high-quality XML processing toolkit, then you are done. TAL introduces another language and I have to learn its conventions and idiosyncrasies.

Your templating engine you have in your paper has yet another language.
So where is the difference?

Now, the same would be true of Terence Parr's StringTemplate engine. It is small, only 4 commands, but it litters the template with too much if you ask me.

TAL's core has also only a few "commands". So not much to learn. If
thats to much, development is not for you I fear ;)

I like the approach of my own HTML::Seamstress --- object-oriented Perl and knowledge of an object-oriented tree-rewriting library is all you need: http://search.cpan.org/~tbone/HTML-Seamstress-5.0b/lib/HTML/Seamstress.pod#Text_substitution_via_replace_content()_API_call.

Still you need to learn. There is no way out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_Attribute_Language

In contrast there would be something like TSSL, which
unfortunately never saw the light of the day yet :-)

http://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zpt/2002-May/003304.html

(This solution would not even touch the HTML directly)

just remember: XHTML is a subset of XML and no one ever touches XML directly. There really is no reason for HTML to be handled any differently than XML. That TSSL is a nightmare. It's trying to be a programming language. And again, we already have Perl/Python, so why bother? You can avoid touching HTML by using Python.

Mini languages is the correct term. And yes they have their
purpose. (Think of SQL for example).

Thank you for writing. I enjoyed the discussion.

Yeah :-)

Cheers
Tino

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