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Re: [OFF] HTML template languages
Erik Ernst wrote:
>
> The HTML-with-embedded-scripts approach would not, IMHO, be able to
> support abstraction in such a profound way, you really need to work
> directly with a real programming language for that.
Certainly not the way I did it! All abstraction was in the "back end".
The scripting extensions merely allowed for iteration over a predefined
collection and branching based on a set of predefined conditions. There
was NOTHING there that could be called abstraction.
One could provide much more complete programming capabilities embedded
into HTML, much as HeiTML does. But for me the question is not really
how abstraction can I provide. (Unlike with the choice of programming
language.) It is how much sophistication can I get away with?
The addition of simple iterations, conditions, and includes can be
handled by pretty much anyone who can edit HTML--no programming ability
or experience included. This because I was not developing a markup
language for myself; I was developing it for use by unsophisticated
users. Mine is a common situation: a developer working on back end
database and program logic, and HTML designer working on presentation.
So my goal was to separate, as much as possible, the presentation of
results from the programming logic and associated abstractions.
If one instead had as a goal the most powerful set of abstractions for
creating dynamic web pages, one would create a much different thing.
Much more like LAML ;-)
References: