Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 7:29:23 AM, Woonsan Ko wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 2:41 PM, Daniel Dekany <[email protected]> wrote:
---->>8---->8----
>> Some very fundamental core directives still would have exceptional
>> syntax, such as:
>>
>> - Assignments (#var/#set as planned for FM3). They look as if they
>> have named parameter syntax first, but in the future we might want to
>> allow things like `<#set x[i] = 1>` or `<#set ns.var = 1>`.
>>
>> - #macro and #function: As in pretty much all languages, the syntax for
>> defining callable things is not the same as the syntax for calling
>> things.
>>
>> - `<#list xs as x>`... though maybe it's not exceptional. `x` is just
>> a loop variable, and I haven't talked about the standardization of
>> that in this thread. But in FM2 it's like `<@myDirective blah;
>> loopVar1, loopVarN>`. But `<#list xs; x>` is IMO not very readable.
>> Maybe we should just allow `as` in place of `;` for custom
>> directives, optionally.
>
> How about <#list xs as="x">
Loop variables (i.e., variables local to the nested content, set by
the enclosing directive) is a commonly used thing in a FreeMarker
(mostly because that #list is commonly used, but note that custom
directives also can have loop variables). Thus, the syntax must make
it clear that you create a loop variable there. If it's just `as="x"`,
then you had to look up in the #list documentation what that does.
More importantly, then tools won't know it.
> or <#list xs>? The latter could make 'it' available implicitly.
`<#list xs>` in FM2 means that you have a nested `<#item as x>`.
As of supporting `it` on other ways, I was thinking about that back
then, but concluded that the loss in clarity doesn't worth it. The
smaller problem is that unless you have Groovy background, you will
have hard time realizing what's going on. The bigger problem is that
especially when you have a longer section nested inside the #list call
(and also when you have multiple #list-s nested into each other),
seeing things like `${it.name}` is much less talking than seeing
`${user.name}`. I'm certain that the majority of those users who know
about `it` would overuse it, making FreeMarker templates less readable
overall. If the user is enforced to give a name to the loop variable,
then it's much less likely that they will call it `i` or `it`.
>> Along with these, I would like to remove `=` as a comparator operator
>> (an alias to `==`). It was already a problem in FM2, as it leads to
>> ambiguities because `=` is also used for named parameters, but if we
>> allow the above things, then it's a much bigger problem.
>
> +1
>
>>
>> I also would like to allow using `-` unescaped in directive and
>> parameter names, like `<@my.foo-bar data-x=123 />` (This is a frequent
>> FM2 request, but couldn't be done because of `=`.)
>
> +0 (since I don't know why it has been requested and I usually don't
> use hyphen in names)
It's because of the HTML 5 `data-...` attributes, and because many XML
schemas use `-` in element and attribute names. We are affected by
those because of declarative XML processing (where you name the
handler macro after the element), and because of stuff like `<#macro m
p1, p2, pN, extraHtmlAttrs...>`, which some want to call like `<@m 1,
2, 3 style='foo' data-bar="baaz" />`. (It's not something I have made
up. It's a very frequent user request.)
> Regards,
>
> Woonsan
>
>>
>> --
>> Thanks,
>> Daniel Dekany
>>
>
--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany
