[whatwg] template element?

[Wrigley, Ave]

Fair point, but there are already a number of other languages that
already appear in HTML pages (scripting, CSS). Admittedly this is
generally fudged to make them valid HTML by putting them in comments and
such, and perhaps the point of WhatWG to to get away from this kind of
kludge. However, is there any reason in principle that you couldn't use
a separate template syntax (so long as it can be dealt elegantly by
non-compliant browsers)? Basically, the advantages (IMHO) of doing this
are:

1. from a transparency point of view, it is a "good thing" for the
template directive to be distinct from the HTML
2. in principle, templating directives are doing a different thing to
HTML elements (like stylesheets are)
3. you could get yourself into a mess (as your orinigal posting pointed
out) trying to shoehorn anything other than very basic templating
primitives (loops / conditionals / variables) into HTML syntax

Ave.

> Wrigley, Ave wrote:
> > I agree - I have had the same reservations. How constrained 
> do people 
> > feel about fitting the templating model into HTML syntax? Clearly, 
> > there are a number of well developed server side templating 
> > minilanguages that
> > (deliberately) use a syntax that is orthogonal to the HMTL markup.
> > Without opening too much of a can of worms ... are there 
> any lessons to
> > be learned / wheels left un-re-invented?
> > 
> > ps. my person preference at the moment is the perl Template 
> Toolkit, 
> > but lets not make this a religious thing ;-)
> 
> Well, the point of putting it into HTML syntax is so that the 
> repetition can be executed client-side without depending on 
> scripting support.
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