RFC: template engine [ was: Re: Implementing tables - advice wanted ]

[Marc van Woerkom]

> Post directed mainly to ke han, but all other list members are welcome
> -- You have mentioned html template engine for erlang - what kind of
> features do you like in there ?
>
>   
It will probably depend on what one wants to achieve by using such an 
engine.

I used smarty and gettext with PHP as member of a large web development 
team.
As far as I can tell, the lead used it to achieve these goals:
- separate the HTML/Javascript presentation from  the data access / control
  written in PHP
- programmers do PHP scripting and provide simple template files, just 
complex
  enough to illustrate how to get the data into the template and what to ask
  from the user
- web designers will then take over the template and add the final design
- use a restricted syntax in the template so that web designers don't 
misuse the exposed
  PHP data / objects
- the web designer can't programm anyway, so give them some syntax 
similar to HTML,
  so they might feel familiar

I think the whole setup there reflected the view that a view high level 
folks develop
or choose the frameworks, so that the programmers are confined to a 
certain degree
to come up with the same kind of web app in the end.
And the template engine was used to separate web programming and
web design and the lousy syntax to confine web designer from doing too much
programming.

A good framework might ensure a certain quality level, so I won't discuss
that one. Also I think organizational separation is not bad, if there
are distinct web developers and web designers.

But about the HTML-like-syntax-for-stupid-web-designers issue I am not
sure. Why not give them the power of a nice language?

Regards,
Marc