[Htmltmpl] making htmltmpl more like HTML::Template

[anders p. <an...@co...>]

i've been programming in Perl for years and have recently been doing
more and more work in python. as a Perl programmer, i'm totally hooked
on HTML::Template. so when i started coding more and more python, i
considered just writing a python copy of the module. first, i decided
to do a quick google search on the off chance that someone else out
there was of a similar mind. obviously i wasn't alone! Tomas Styblo
has saved me quite a bit of time. thank you.

anyway, i have a lot of existing applications that were built with
Perl and HTML::Template that i would like to integrate with or totally
replace with python. i'd rather not have to spend much time re-writing
template files (and documentation that uses the perl syntax), so i'm
very interested in getting htmltmpl.py to accept *exactly* the same
syntax as the perl version.

specifically:=20

- case insensitivity. i find it much easier to type lowercase so all
  of my template files are written like <tmpl_var name=3D"foo"> rather
  than <TMPL_VAR NAME=3D"foo">.=20
- allow lowercase names for loop variables. eg, <tmpl_loop name=3D"foo">=20
  should be legal.=20
- allow linebreaks inside tags. <tmpl_var
  name=3D"foo"> should be parsed the same as <tmpl_var name=3D"foo">

i did a bit of quick hacking and wrote a patch that handles the first
two. i'll probably start on the third sometime next week, but it's not
as high priority for me. the patch is available at:=20

  http://thraxil.org/htmltmpl/html-tmpl-2003-05-06_01.patch.gz

in addition to case insensitivity and allowing lowercase names for
loop variables, it also adds a very simple set_dict() method to
TemplateProcessor and eliminates the exception that is raised if
save_precompiled() can't write to the template directory, instead just
silently returning (essentially making precompile just automatically
turn off instead of raising errors). set_dict() lets you do something
like:=20

   tproc.set_dict(some_function_that_returns_a_dict())

instead of=20

   dict =3D some_function_that_returns_a_dict()
   for key in dict:
     tproc.set(key,dict[key])


now some questions:=20

    1) is htmltmpl.py even being maintained? on the sourceforge page i
    don't see any changes since 2001.
    2) what was the reasoning behind making loop names start with a
    capital letter?=20
    3) is anyone else doing similar work on making htmltmpl.py more
    compatible with HTML::Template templates?

again, thanks for writing htmltmpl, Tomas.=20

--=20
anders pearson : http://www.columbia.edu/~anders/
   C C N M T L : http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/
        weblog : http://thraxil.org/