[htmltmpl] RFC: Template Tag Attributes

[Timm M. <tm...@ag...>]

I have a project which involves changing our current pages using SSI 
#includes into using an HTML::Template-based solution instead.  The 
question of how to search these templates came up, and I've suggested using 
htdig:// with a filter program that will convert the templates into text 
for indexing.

Inevitably, there will be certain pages using TMPL_INCLUDE tags.  I imagine 
that most of these will contain data that will not want to be searched for, 
such as footers, and therefore my filter program can simply ignore 
them.  However, I don't feel safe in making the blanket assumption that 
/all/ included files don't need to be searchable.

Is it possible to add a flexible attribute system to the current 
HTML::Template design?  I'm thinking of something like this:

<TMPL_INCLUDE NAME="file.txt" SEARCHABLE="no">

The additional attribute(s) could be ignored by HTML::Template, but hold 
meaning for external programs that need additional information on the 
template tag.

I'm sure it can be done with a filter, but frankly, I think that's a 
cop-out solution, being that the current filter mechanism does not have a 
way to hook into HTML::Template's parser.