Thanks for your contribution! I can tell you put a lot of effort
into the presentation, what with the tutorial and FAQ and live demo.
I'm not a heavy HAML user, so take my opinions for only what they're
worth.
Having only played on the live demo without trying to code anything
of my own, I don't have a good feeling for how (and how well) you
allow access to the host server-side language. The nice thing about
HAML is that = and - mean that ruby code follows. It seems you're
just passing the code through with the rest of the text. The downside
of this seems to be that you would have to delimit that code with
markers native to that language: back to using lots of <% %> and <? ?>
pairs. With your focus on extreme terseness, I would think this would
be something you'd really want to address - perhaps in the same way
HAML does.
Some quick opinions/questions about the syntax. In your FAQ, you
say you strive "for total elimination of syntax, particularly with
block tags." The most important thing for syntax (other than
correctness, of course) is regularity, and I think you should take
another overall look at that aspect.
You say you "[dispense] with the need for percent tags in front of
block tags." But the purpose of those % tags is to distinguish the
tags from other types of text. Without some means for that, you (the
parser) have to *guess* what is meant. (Or maybe you have some
complex-yet-deterministic method to decide this, but the point is the
user is still for the most part left guessing.) Consider the following
ambiguous SPHAML example:
p
p |
p | p
p
p
p
p |
p | p
What that actually yields is:
p
p |
<p>p</p>
<p>
p
</p>
<p>
p |
<p>p</p>
</p>
Is that what you would expect to get? Is that what everyone would
reasonably expect? Of course that's a contrived example and not very
realistic, BUT it's important because the syntax ambiguity that it
exposes will definitely come up at some point in a larger project.
For the price of one character per tag, there's no guessing at
all. Suggested compromise for ease/brevity: Maybe instead of using a %
use a character that saves you from having to hit the shift key, like
-,/';
Same observation on your "singleton tag" syntax:
> hr
If you're going to use a special syntax form there, why not for all tags?
On final thing - while going through the tutorial, I did an experiment
that I think reveals a bug:
.Goodbye .bye
l8r!
Produces invalid HTML that probably is not what you'd intend:
<div .bye class="Goodbye">
l8r!
</div>
Keep on codin'
-Neil
On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 7:36 AM, Steve Howell <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi everybody, I would like to announce shpaml here. Shpaml is a haml-
> like language that is targeted for non-Ruby environments, particularly
> Python and Javascript. Obviously most people on this list are happily
> using haml, but if you happen to be lurking and waiting for a port to
> Python/JS, shpaml might be what you are looking for. I am aware that
> there are some previous haml-like implementations in Python, but this
> one is more actively maintained.
>
> The website for shpaml is here:
>
> http://shpaml.webfactional.com/
>
> You will see that shpaml is very similar to haml, but not completely
> equivalent:
>
> http://shpaml.webfactional.com/compare
>
> Like haml, shpaml has a showdown page, and I use a little bit of color
> to illustrate the cruft that comes from HTML:
>
> http://shpaml.webfactional.com/examples
>
> I don't think there is much that haml can borrow back from shpaml, but
> if there is anything worth sharing between the two projects, you can
> find source code here:
>
> https://bitbucket.org/showell/shpaml_website/src/
>
> One thing that shpaml has is an online tutorial, where you can try
> before you buy:
>
> http://shpaml.webfactional.com/tutorial/1
>
> Shpaml was recently ported to JS, which allows for even more immediate
> feedback on how the language works:
>
> http://kp.hcoop.net/kp/doc/tip/shpaml/js/demo.html
>
> The shpaml project is gathering a little momentum, but it it is still
> very early going, and we are wrestling with design decisions that are
> probably old hat for haml folks, so it would be great to benefit from
> your experience and lessons learned on the mailing list:
>
> http://shpaml.webfactional.com/discuss
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve
>
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