Hi Jonathan, Just wanted (in all sincerity) to thank you for your comment on the numeric patch earlier. A brief constructive suggestion is very helpful, and (although I've disagreed on a few of your points) it's clear you've got some excellent insight into template engine design. There was some very good discussion on this patch with advice and opinions from 4 or 5 members of this list. I'm sure the floating point number capability will be a nice feature addition to Velocity.
WILL ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Revusky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 9:45 AM Subject: Re: Velocity Numerics [PATCH] > Will Glass-Husain wrote: > > I'm not sure I see a downside to including this (ability to compare numbers > > and Strings). Template designers are not programmers. When they hit > > problems (particularly those involving types), it'd be nice if most things > > just worked. > > > > I can see a few counter points. It won't work well for formatted numbers > > (and only for internationalized numbers in the current locale). And it's > > not a common use case (as a few have pointed out) to compare 4.0 > "4.0". > > If we include my TemplateNumber proposal, then the developer can always wrap > > a String with an adapter that implements TemplateNumber so that it is > > properly comparable. Thus, (personally), I don't need this feature that > > badly. > > > > But as I say above, I don't see a big downside to including it. Some might > > say... If you don't want it, don't use it. > > > > Let's not get in a big flame war here. We've heard from Jonathan and John. > > I wouldn't think that my vote counts, of course. I'm not really part of > this community. I'm lead developer of a competing template engine. > > That said, if you respect my opinion, and you want to know what > semantics I would propose in a given situation, you hardly even need to > ask me or wait for me to chime in. You can just look at how the template > engine that cannot be named does it and that will give you an idea of > what I think the right way of going about things is... > > Regards, > > Jonathan Revusky > -- > lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/ > FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html > > > > Any comments from others? > > > > Best, > > WILL > > > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "John J. Allison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 3:54 PM > > Subject: Re: Velocity Numerics [PATCH] > > > > > > > >>Jonathan Revusky wrote: > >> > >>>I know that perl automatically coerces numbers into strings in these > >>>spots, and I recognize that it "works" as far as that goes. > >>> > >>>However, that does not tend in any way to alter my opinion that it's a > >>>terrible idea. > >> > >>Yeah, but it works so well in Perl that nobody cares that > >>it's a bad idea (like a lot of stuff in Perl). > >>(I don't follow perl-dev or whatever, maybe it's actually > >>a big issue for them.) And Perl does have different operators > >>for numbers and strings which makes things clearer. > >> > >>Auto-coercing strings to numbers could contribute to Velocity's > >>usability rather than having to use syntax like > >> > >> #set ($foo = 42) > >> $foo.parseInt($bar) > >> > >>It gets quite useful when template writers can't influence > >>the API of the Java objects they're referencing (even via subclassing > >>a wrapper) and are stuck with toString() or equivalent when at > >>least sometimes they know the string represents a number. > >> > >>Of course that still doesn't mean it's a good idea for Velocity, > >>and I don't immediately see where *I* would write code that > >>requires this coercion. :) > >> > >>John Allison > >>[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >> > >>--------------------------------------------------------------------- > >>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] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
