[whatwg] Repetition templates missing

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2008, Aaron Swartz wrote:
> 
> In a recent interview 
> (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=718) 
> Ian Hickson says "For example, the repetition templates proposal is 
> almost certainly going to be dropped."
> 
> Can you please say why?

It solves about 5% of the use cases. There are dozens of other solutions 
that cover overlapping areas, but all of them just handle 5% of the real 
needs. People have so many varied needs that we are better off providing 
an infrastructure for templating than providing a single solution.

The data templates stuff in HTML5 is another example of a solution in the 
same space. Personally I prefer it, but it doesn't really matter -- it 
handles just as many use cases, some that repetition blocks don't, some 
that they do, and it just does it differently.


> I was quite fond of this proposal and we're using it on OpenLibrary.org, 
> where it's been a great boon to our development.

Nothing stops you from continuing to use it -- indeed, if you are using it 
now, then that demonstrates that it is possible to do it without UA 
support. :-) With the new data-* attributes, we can allow a thousand 
templated flowers to bloom and we don't need to honour any of them with 
the special spec annointing oil (as it were).

If there is anything the browsers could provide to make implementing 
things like this easier, let us know and I can add them to the spec.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'