RE: XSLT model not "natural"? [was Re: [ANN] FreeMarke

Hi,

I find quit a few people are scared off by XSL, but I don't see the benefits
of Freemarker: 

<if session.msg><call draw_tooltip()>
<else>
</if>
<call draw_icon_rows("5")>

First, you still have what most people complain about - the angle brackets.

Second, it is not close to being XML so you can't check for well-formedness
or validity.

We use HSphere site hosting software (soon to change...). They wrote their
control panel templates in Freemarker. The language itself was not hard to
pick up but the templates were written without understanding of how to
separate content/data from presentation. It made trying to modify the
templates ridiculously more difficult then it should have been. Perhaps
simpler templating languages can be learned faster, but they lead to sloppy
work that is next to impossible to reuse.

I guess that will be there in any 'templating' language, but the more you
stick with XSL the more you are steered toward the ideal - separation of
concerns. 

To sum up, yes, XSL is more difficult for many people to pick up naturally,
but worth the effort.

Best,
-Rob


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list