We've found Velocity exactly the right tool in projects where we need to integrate a clean and easy to learn, yet effecient, content processing tool to a framework where content is developed and maintained by people who are not programmers, but talented graphic artists and document writers familiar with XML and HTML. The framework developed by Java programmers provides a full set of additional tools to access business logic of the system in a controlled way through Velocity's tool API. The final product must be stable and maintainable several years after its release and training of content producers is one of the most expensive cost items in such a project. The number of new versions and additional features not directly needed in template processing is not an issue, but stability, reliability, backward compatibility and, most of all, a clean and well-thought architecture.
FreeMarker is too complicated, illogical and changing too rapidly that we could apply it in such projects. But it's a useful tool in projects with a tight schedule, smaller amount of resources and shorter lifecycle, where we don't have time to build a full framework around the business logic of the system, but can apply FreeMarker's extended features directly instead. Also content producers must be more experienced in programming to understand namespaces, customized directives, wrapped objects, etc.
So why not let Velocity and FreeMarker to follow their own design philosophies and people will have alternatives to choose from based on their different demands?
-- Ilkka
Jonathan Revusky wrote:
Nathan Bubna wrote:>> ... cut cut cut ...
Jonathan Revusky said:
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