2008-01-06 16:52:58 +01:00
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[[tag wishlist]]
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2008-01-06 16:52:11 +01:00
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HTML::Template is an okay templating kit, but it lacks a lot of powerful
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features and thus makes it rather hard to give an ikiwiki site a consistent
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look. If you browse the templates provided in the tarball, you'll notice that
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more than one of them contain the `<html>` tag, which is unnecessary.
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Maybe it's just me, I also find HTML::Template cumbersome to use, due in part
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to its use of capital letters.
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Finally, the software seems unmaintained: the mailing list and searchable
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archives linked from
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<http://html-template.sourceforge.net/html_template.html#frequently%20asked%20questions>
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are broken and the author has not replied to my query in months.
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I would love to see ikiwiki use the [Template
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Toolkit](http://template-toolkit.org/) as templating engine.
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One major reason for TT is its use of slots, a concept I first encountered
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with Zope Page Templates and never wanted to miss it again. Let me quickly
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illustrate, using the HTML::Template syntax for simplicity. Traditionally,
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templating is done with includes:
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Page A Page B
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<TMPL_INCLUDE header> <TMPL_INCLUDE header>
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this is page A this is page B
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<TMPL_INCLUDE footer> <TMPL_INCLUDE footer>
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This involves four pages, and if you mistype "footer" on page B,
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it'll be broken in potentially subtle ways.
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Now look at the approach with slots:
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MainTemplate
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This is the header
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<TMPL_SLOT content>
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This is the footer
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Page A Page B
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<TMPL_USE MainTemplate> <TMPL_USE MainTemplate>
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<TMPL_FILL content> <TMPL_FILL content>
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This is page A This is page B
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</TMPL_FILL> </TMPL_FILL>
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</TMPL_USE> </TMPL_USE>
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As soon as you think about more structure pages with various slots
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to fill, I am sure you can see the appeal of that approach. If not,
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here is some more documentation: <http://wiki.zope.org/ZPT/METALSpecification11>
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I would be glad to volunteer time to make this switch happen, such as rewrite
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the templates. I'd prefer not having to touch Perl though...
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