This problem is not specific to Mason, but many templating engines. One of the strengths of a templating engine is the ability to have a group of elements that are common to a set of pages, such as a Mason component.
Example: I have a site with a common navigation section running down the left. It includes the proper placement (tables or CSS-P), image links, image maps and maybe even javascript for rollovers, all in a neat little package. Whenever I want this navigation I just call its component. The problem is that when designing a page in an HTML editor the single call to the component, which generally gets ignored by the editor, will not take up the same space as the component that gets inserted. This makes the layout difficult to visualize and tweak in the HTML editor. I end up usually designing the page *with the component in place* and then at the end when I am satisfied everything is good, I replace it with the component call. This is very inefficient. A solution would be to have something like the component-with-content feature, except that the content is discarded by Mason. Maybe a component-with-dummy-content. Example: <&! /components/leftnav.mas, page => "products" &> <img src="/images/grayarea.gif" width="180" height="500"> </&> The HTML editor would ignore the Mason specific parts and display the gray GIF, in this case, which would take up the space normally occupied by the full blown navigation component thus preserving the layout of the page. Mason would substitute the GIF for the content of the actual component. This is actually a simple change. I can submit a patch if people agree this is useful. For me it would help immensely. Or, are there any suggestions on how to accomplish this currently? Paul Wallingford ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Mason-users mailing list Mason-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mason-users
