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