Re: [htmltmpl] RFC: Persistent or 2-stage evaluation

[Mathew R. <mat...@re...>]

> The three things I've found that make multi-language processing =
difficult
> with H::T are:
>=20
> 1. One-time evaluation of a template's page-specific vars (so that
> subsequent displays can deal only in truly variable evaluations).
> 2. No way to say <tmpl_include name=3D"constant_text_<tmpl_var =
name=3DLANG>"> to
> use language-specific text determined at run time.
> 3. No way to recurse variables which may have been evaluated with text =
that
> contains variables.
>=20
> #2 and 3 are troubling because, if I can't pull in fragments of a page =
(for
> a language), then I'm likely to use "Locale::Maketext" to provide me =
with
> what may be lengthy fragments. If the fragments contain markup (like a
> link), then I'm stuck because the fragment's link will contain an =
attribute:
> "title=3D<TMPL_VAR NAME=3DLINK_TITLE_TEXT>" which will not be =
evaluated.
>=20
> Feeding ->output back into new H::T objects can get around a lot of =
this. It
> would be a lot easier if those 3 features were available. They don't =
seem
> like they would require too much kludging.

FWIW, the company I work for uses H::T for page generation, and we =
handle an arbitrary number of languages.  Currently we have the product =
translated into 4 different languages, and we have two more on the way.  =
H::T is used in combination with the Locale::MakePhrase package.... =
however, I use a modified H::T....

The reason that I made a custom package of H::T was that the only =
solutions that I could see to make language translations work was:
a) provide a different template for each language, then use the =
appropriate one based on users' language
b) use H::T::E with a callback function so that static template strings =
could run though the translation engine
b) modify H::T so that it supports custom TMPL_xxx tags so that static =
template strings could run through the translation engine

Points (a) and (b) require no changes to H::T, and I can say from =
experience that it works reasonably well.  However, I found:

   <TMPL_VAR EXPR=3D"catalog('some static string')">=20

to be more nasty than:

   <TMPL_CATALOG "some static string">

so I chose to modify H::T.  In the process, I added some extra features =
to H::T.

If you need more info on how I do language translations, let me know...
Mathew