My goal with what I call "FreeMarker 3" is to mercilessly get things
right, while re-using source code as much as possible. I don't want to
change the "flavor" of FreeMarker, I mean, it should come with roughly
the same features (even if modularized out), same core
beliefs/paradigms (${noSuchVar} should be an error, etc.), and
*similar* but not identical look-and-feel (though later I think a
Velocity/WebMacro-like option would be desirable too). I would like to
give up some dynamism for the sake of better toolability though. I
also pant to give more focus to non-Web applications, such as source
code generation, where white-space control is important.The political issue comes from that, I care about giving the best FM-ish template engine I can, and I don't want tradition to be in may way (that's what FM2 is for). After 12+ FM2 technical support and maintenance and accumulated wisdom that's what motivates me. (Yes, that's just me, but we know that the only hope for FM3 is that I bootstrap it with a lot of work, and only then there's a slight hope that others will join to that much more attractive branch.) And so, what if, me in agreement with others here think that, just as an example, `s?capFirst` and `s!default` are too weird, and `s|capFirst` and `s?:default` is a better compromise. Trivial change technically, not a paradigm shift at all, but for the outsider, it feels like a sharp change. Or, we decide that, if we forget the past for moment, FTLValue and FTLNumber are a better names than TemplateModel and TemplateNumberModel. Trivial change again, but very visible for the outsider. Or, a deeper change, we decide that #include sucks after all (hint: it does). And so on. These changes will pile up. Nobody would say a bad word about these if it's just yet another new template language (to die due to lack of attention), but if we "market" this as FreeMarker 3... is that OK to do? And is that OK for the ASF, because, one of the reasons FM was accepted into the incubator is that existing Apache projects (and Apache members) are relying on FM2. Well, they don't rely on FM3, and it's not yet proven that they will if there ever will be an FM3. What do you think? Can we (well, me initially, as I said) do this? -- Thanks, Daniel Dekany
