Joerg Heinicke skrev:
On 13.07.2007 10:31, Grzegorz Kossakowski wrote:
...
Actually I'm not very keen on any templating approach at all. I don't
like to first provide data to some template context and second
retrieve it from there in the template. IMO it's much better to have a
complete push approach and only encroach if it is necessary (like XSLT
templates). (My diploma thesis was about this btw.)
I prefer a push approach as well. But this project is not about creating
the ideal template framework. It is about keeping back compatibility and
at the same time giving users a simpler and cleaner way forward for new
development and possible refactoring of old stuff.
AFAIU, it will be possible to use the object model without any default
content, (is that true Grzegorz?). In such a scenario you can have a
pure push approach, by only pushing the data that should be rendered
into the object model.
A possible implementation for this is to convert the form model into
an XML representation
Not everything is in forms. We need a mechanism for rendering model data
without connecting it to a form.
and let a quite generic XSLT do the rest. With this approach no EL
come into play. This also means there is a separate object-to-string
step.
I preferred that kind of solution once. But now I find it unnecessary
complicated in most cases. The first problem is that it requires some
work to convert bean structure to XML data. You will probably need some
configuration file that handle part of the conversion. In comparison to
just applying an EL to a bean structure it is more complicated. Second,
many people find XSLT much more complicated than a simple template
language. Third, the development of XSLT processors and tooling, has
been a disappointment. Xalan, still doesn't implement XSLT 2.0, and the
error messages from both Xalan and Saxon can often be cryptic or non
existent.
In the end XSLT has its uses, but for simple rendering of beans I find
simple template languages like JXTG much more productive (and I have
written tons of XSLT).
/Daniel
