On May 3, 2006, at 2:34 PM, Allen Gilliland wrote:
Can I just say ... hammer on head <bang>!
This is something that I have echoed a few times on the list and I
am going to take this opportunity to say it again. I think that in
many places we have overused the velocity macros and by doing so
have discouraged bloggers from accessing the important and useful
information directly via objects in the Velocity context.
I don't mind having macros for convenience, but I believe they
should be used sparingly in order to supplement the functionality
already available in accessing objects directly.
Historical note: At one time, we thought that it was best for users
to use ONLY the VelociMacros and never to touch the PageModel and
especially not the PageHelper objects. So we created VelociMacros for
each and every, large and small thing.
Now, I think that was a wrong headed approach.
Macros enable re-use and that can be important for some widely used
and more complex widgets (e.g. a calendar or an entries pager
component), but for little things like #showPermaLink() they're just
silly overkill and somewhat limiting to those trying to customize
templates.
- Dave
