> eek :)

I figured you'd say that :) Like I said, it's more of a thought experiment than
an actual proposal.

I guess what it comes down to is that there are 3 choices for doing procedural
tasks in Ant:

1) Do templating using XSLT.
2) Do scripting using, essentially, an Ant-specific language, using elements
like <if>, <case>, etc.
3) Do scripting using an existing language like Java or JavaScript.

Number 1 feels totally unnatural to me, because it's denying the inherently
procedural nature of the job. Number 2 is what Jason is proposing, but I'm not
wild about the idea of essentially creating a new scripting language. So I'm
exploring Number 3. Granted, it's got problems of its own. If you use Java, it
means having to compile it. No matter what language you use, people will have
to learn that language. (XSLT has the same problem, BTW.)

I could accept XSLT better if it were presented as "it's not great, because
it's trying to cram a procedural task into a declarative system, but it sucks
less than the alternatives." Right now it sounds like "XSLT is a perfectly fine
way to go," which I don't agree with.

Alex

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