Will Glass-Husain wrote:
Hey, just a quick comment. Check the velocity-user archives for extensive
"velocity versus freemarker" conversation. This has been hashed to death
here in previous months... might be more productive to take the FreeMarker
specific part of the conversation to the FreeMarker list.
Will, finally, I just have a question that I'm going to ask. I know it's
naive to expect an honest answer, but here goes:
Will, are you *really* interested in working on Velocity, in making it
better?
Now, I suppose you kind of have to answer in the affirmative, even with
some tone of indignation, but really, I just never got the impression
that you are genuinely interested in this template engine problem space.
It's not just you, Will. Given the opportunity, you and the other
Velocity people, like Geir and so on, simply do not *engage* -- I mean
*engage* in a discussion about what features are desirable in a template
engine.
You just don't *really* seem genuinely interested in the topic. Okay,
you will end up saying in some huffy tone that FreeMarker is off-topic,
but really that doesn't stand up to any logical scrutiny. I mean, if
somebody on a user list asks about a feature and that feature is not
present in Velocity, it is quite relevant to the topic *and* to Velocity
development in general that the feature has been implemented in a
competing tool. It is of interest because, in general, you should be
interested in what is going on out there, but also because it indicates
that another community thought that the feature was desirable enough to
add. They would have discussed it and so on. This really should be of
interest to somebody who is interested in this problem space.
Basically, what comes to my mind is something that I think it was Mark
Twain said. Something like: "A literary classic is a book that everybody
wants to have read, but nobody wants to read."
In a similar way -- I know it's very unflattering -- it seems like you
(and the other people nominally involved in Velocity, it's not just you)
-- want to be Velocity developers but you don't really want to develop
Velocity.
I mean, let's face it. If there was genuine, real interest in moving
Velocity forward, could the pace of development really be *this* slow? I
know as well as anybody that it is a volunteer effort and so on, but
even so,... to characterize Velocity's progress as "snail's pace" is
probably unfair to snails.
Of course, one result of this is that, at the moment, there is no
technically based competition between our communities. If you look at
the RoadMap on your wiki, there is literally nothing on your Vel 2.0
wish list that was not already implemented in FreeMarker 3 years ago(!)
This is how behind you are technically.
So, if, contrary to outward appearances, you really are interested in
this problem space, how can it be of interest to work on something that
is so obsolete technically (and increasingly so). It seems to me that
people interested in this would either put in a big push to catch up
technically or they could just give up and maybe even consider joining
the community that is really innovating in this space.
But if the outward appearances are in accordance with reality, and
you're not really interested in this problem space, then frankly, what
the heck are you guys doing? Going through the motions for some reason?
Wouldn't that basically just be an empty farce?
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
http://freemarker.blogspot.com/
WILL
On 3/10/06, jian chen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi, Jonathan,
I am a bit sad to see that the Velocity project hasn't been that active
these days, particularly with the much needed enhancements still pending.
However, I just don't like FreeMarker for the following major reasons:
1) FreeMarker tags look similar as html tags.
2) Too much feature in FreeMarker. The template engine language should be
succinct. Otherwise, it might give people too much flexibility in
templating.
I would hope to have a better version of Velocity though, with the bug
fixes
and correct feature enhancements.
Jian
Lead Developer, Seattle Lighting
On 3/10/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jurica Viskovic wrote:
Will , thanks!
Last night i looked at source to see how
to simply implement those new features, but
it seems it will not be as easy as i thought.
The fact is that if nobody even gives you any pointers as to where to
look, where the crucial points in the code are, it's not generally going
to be easy. Some people are surely better at this than others, but I
personally find it very hard to get into an unfamiliar codebase and
understand the "mind" behind it.
I think it's only fair to tell you and anybody else interested in having
macros work this way, that this is already available in FreeMarker. For
example, if I define a macro as follows:
<#macro foo bar baz="some default value">
...
</#macro>
it can be invoked with either one or two arguments. The baz argument
reverts to the default value when it is invoked with just one argument.
Macros with can be invoked with the parameters by name, as in:
<@foo bar="arg1" baz="arg2"/>
If I listed all the other other goodies in FreeMarker's macro system
that are not present in Velocity, this message would get quite long.
See:
http://freemarker.org/docs/dgui_misc_userdefdir.html
These features have been present in FreeMarker for 3 years or more and
many people use this stuff in production and it is highly stress tested.
An existing mature tool that already has the features you want is likley
to be a better technical solution.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Anyway i will forward this discussion on developers
mailing list.
Regards, jure
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Will Glass-Husain
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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