The whitespace issue and the taglibs seem like a good idea. I make extensive use of the Velocity Tools sub project. If I wanted to migrate from Velocity (that, I must say, I have been using for years without any real complaints) to Freemarker, should I re-implement those tools as custom tags, or do you have other means of getting the 'pull' functionality?
Eelco ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Revusky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 1:52 AM Subject: Re: JavaCC open sourced on dev.java.net > Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote: > > Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > >>last year or so. We are now in our 4th major release cycle of the last > >>16 months, and each such cycle has added major new features. Come to > >>think of it, I wonder: what was the last significant feature added to > >>Velocity and when was it added? > > > > > > Can you tell me, what the "significant features" were, that you've added. > > > > One of the biggest advantages of Velocity is the fact that it gets its > > job well done and doesn't try to be "more" than a template language. > > > > While I'm still a little unhappy with some decisions regarding numbers > > and arithmetics, I do must admit that this self-reluctance from the > > developers really helped to clearly distinguish with what should be > > done on the vm pages (view) and what should be done in java code > > (model). > > > > As Turbine is one of the major users of Velocity (and we just dropped > > FreeMarker out... ;-) ), I'm really interested where you think that > > Freemarker is superior to Velocity. > > <sigh> > > Well, probably when I got very heavily involved with FM and basically > took on a leadership role about 16 months ago, you could have said that > Velocity and FreeMarker were roughly comparable, that one was stronger > in certain ways and the other in other ways. However, at this stage of > the history of the two projects, where Velocity has been entirely > neglected over that time period and FreeMarker has been actively > developed, any fair-minded comparison of the two things is just > devastating. FreeMarker is clearly just way out in front. Here is a > (probably incomplete) rundown: > > FreeMarker can use 3rd party JSP taglibs. No competing template engine > currently offers this, as far as I know. See here for more details. > http://freemarker.org/docs/pgui_misc_servlet.html#d0e6925 > > FreeMarker has directives for fine control of whitespace. (Something > that is complained of constantly on the Vel lists.) See here for more > details. http://freemarker.org/docs/dgui_misc_whitespace.html > > FreeMarker has support for decimal number literals and arithmetic > operations on integers and decimal numbers( velocity only supports > integers.) Also, you can maintain separate templates for different > languages/locales and the number formatting (2.3 vs. 2,3) happens > correctly and transparently depending on the locale. You can also > override the number_format setting for different parts of your template, > so as to display scientific notation or whatever number format you want > for the numbers in that part of the template. See here for more details. > http://freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_setting.html#d0e10425 > > You can define variables and macros in separate name-spaces so that > different people can work on different pieces without any possibility of > naming clashes. See here for more details: > http://freemarker.org/docs/dgui_misc_namespace.html > > You can define transforms (or filters) that that arbitrary blocks of > template output can be passed through. See here for more details: > http://freemarker.org/docs/pgui_datamodel_transform.html > > FreeMarker macros are much more powerful. Macros can forward reference > other macros. Macros can contain local variables, thus avoiding naming > clashes with possible variable names outside the macro. FreeMarker > macros can have default parameters. There is also the possibility of > associating a template block with a macro invocation. See here for more > details: http://freemarker.org/docs/dgui_misc_userdefdir.html > > FreeMarker interoperates very cleanly with Jython. See here for more > details: http://freemarker.org/docs/pgui_misc_jythonwrapper.html > > FreeMarker (as of the 2.3 cycle still in preview part of the cycle) has > support for declarative-style XML processing (a la XSLT). See here for > more details. http://freemarker.org/docs/xgui_declarative_basics.html > > > > Maybe we pull FM back in for > > 2.4-dev... :-) > > Maybe. I'm not holding my breath. :-( > > Regards, > > Jonathan Revusky > -- > lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/ > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
