[Seaside] Rails and Seaside

[Avi Bryant]

On Jan 6, 2006, at 3:04 PM, Jeremy Shute wrote:
>
> As strange and backward as it sounds, I like the HTML::Template  
> method of
> doing things (from Perl).  I don't think it's the sweet-spot in  
> Seaside's
> case, because Seaside ends up programmatically generating id's, form
> variable names, and other highly dynamic behavior that IS quite  
> dependent
> on the number and nature of output tags.

Yes, that's exactly the issue - a much higher proportion of the  
content in a given HTML page produced by Seaside is generated/ 
meaningless than for typical web apps, which means that the  
integration points between the code and the template are much greater  
in number.  In my view, this tips the balance away from templates as  
a viable tool.

> However, the rigors of
> HTML::Template ensure that no one "slips" logic into the  
> "presentation"
> layer.

Those arguments have never convinced me.  It seems to me you have two  
choices: either your templating language is close to being Turing- 
complete, in which case you're encouraging programming with a vastly  
inferior language to whatever the rest of your app is in, or your  
templating language is so restrictive that certain complex layouts  
are simply impossible to express in it.  To use another example from  
Dabble, I *really* wouldn't want to see the template for nested  
grouping like this: http://dabbledb.com/about/billable.php .

Avi