You got it. But there is nothing bad about it. As all organisms in its individual development it reproduces the evolution of its ancestors.
Morever most of (99%?) dynamic content on comnemporary Internet is generated by these print-HTML-as-text engines, as you enumed them. And it works because it's simple and intuitive. Also sometimes you don't need all those DOM trees to worry about, as the HTML may already be provided by the art designer. For trees then there is XML/XSLT, which could be used for complex constructs. The tree rewriting or transformation, visitor pattern, pipeline, server-side events etc. are in the future, in something that can be referred to as JHPX. In the meantime, as there are some basic things that need to be in place, such as the CGI foundation, in which different handlers such as JHP, JHPX, your-favorite can be plugged in. So there is no need to argue what is better, it can be a matter of style or preference. If you could elaborate how your style of template transforms is working and how it can fit J CGI pipeline, and how it is different from JHP, it could be a good step towards integrating it. --- Terrence Brannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > JHP is quite cute. I'm impressed with how much work has been done on > it. But at the same time, I must wonder deeply. > > This is because J is about clearly seeing what problem one is solving. > > I assert that dynamic html generation, be it for CGI or whatever, is > best perceived as tree rewriting. In this case, we have a processor (a > J program) operating at meta-level to the processed entity, an HTML > tree. > > In contrast to my meta-level paradigm for HTML-generation, JHP puts > the J programming language at object-level, inter-meshed with the > HTML. This is similar to 99% of the dynamic html techniques across > 100% of all languages - PHP, JSP, ASP, HTML::Mason, etc all fall into > this trap. > > There are only a few push-style systems out there - my own > HTML::Seamstress (perl), meld3 (python) , XMLC (java) and > StringTemplate (java and python). > > Dynamic html generation in the JHP style is known as "pull-style" > templating. What this means is two things: > > 1 - the HTML is treated as a program > 2 - the HTML is treated at its lowest level as a string instead of a tree. > > Terence Parr has proven > http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~parrt/papers/mvc.templates.pdf > that pull-style templating is the most degenerate (not trying to be > insulting or derogatory here) case of push-style dynamic html > generation. That is to say, push-style is a more powerful style of > development and at its lowest level is found to be pull-style. > > Push-style is more sound from a software engineering point of view for > the reasons I list here: > > http://www.livingcosmos.org/Members/sundevil/software/push-style-dynamic-text-html-generation/rationale?portal_status_message=Changes%20saved. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
