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The time is right for a DOM templating API

(justinfagnani.com)
218 points mdhb | 11 comments | 26 Jun 25 19:23 UTC | HN request time: 3.2s | source | bottom
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taeric ◴[26 Jun 25 23:50 UTC] No.44392596[source]▶
Hard not to laugh out loud at "We know what good syntax for templating looks like." We don't. Not even close. Because I'd hazard a good template is almost certainly more of a visual thing than it is a symbolic one. Is why dreamweaver and such was so successful back in the day. And why so many designers learn with tools like photoshop.

Also hard not to feel like this is reaching hard to try and recreate xslt. :( It is inevitable that someone will want to template something that isn't well formed, but can combine into a well formed thing. And then you are stuck trying to find how to do it. (Or correlated entities on a page that are linked, but not on the same tree, as it were. Think "label" and "for" as an easy example in plain markup.)

If I could wave my magic wand, what we need is fewer attempts to make templates all fit in with the rube goldberg that is the standard document layout for markup. People will go through obscene lengths to recreate what judicious use of absolute positioning can achieve fairly well. Sure, you might have to do math to get things to fit, but why do we feel that is something that we have to force the machine to do again and again and again on the same data?

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9rx ◴[27 Jun 25 12:44 UTC] No.44396377[source]▶
We do know what is good. We may not know what is perfect, but perfect need not be the enemy of good.
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taeric ◴[27 Jun 25 14:10 UTC] No.44396939[source]▶
What is good, then? Because I'm really not seeing it. Just peek at substack and bluesky to see how the templating ideas in web dev have turned out. (I'm assuming they are decent modern examples. If not, I'm game to see one.)
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1. 9rx ◴[27 Jun 25 15:04 UTC] No.44397338[source]▶
That which improves upon previous solutions.

I have no idea what substack and bluesky are, but I'll take that to suggest that someone used templating to create a mess. While that is no doubt true — someone can create a mess out of anything — would the same person have avoided the mess if the templating wasn't there? It is just ergonomics, after all, not some fundamentally different idea.

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2. taeric ◴[27 Jun 25 15:30 UTC] No.44397572[source]▶
substack and bluesky are just newer sites. I don't even think they are bad. Just I question the volume of markup that they use to layout stuff. Knowing that that is the standard.

Do you have examples that are good?

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3. 9rx ◴[27 Jun 25 15:34 UTC] No.44397600[source]▶
At the time, this was good:

   printf("%d", 10);
It might not hold up to today's standards, but "good" isn't a constant.
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4. taeric ◴[27 Jun 25 15:50 UTC] No.44397755{3}[source]▶
So, no? You don't have any examples by which to demonstrate what a good templating language is?

You seem to have gone on a tangent that "good" is a general topic in my question. I meant do we have specifically good examples of templates. Surely if we know what good templating syntax is, we can share examples of it? Even if you can't describe it directly.

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5. 9rx ◴[27 Jun 25 15:54 UTC] No.44397790{4}[source]▶
I provided a good template language, at least given what was good at the time it was introduced. As good is necessarily a moving target, one can never really satisfy your request as by the time the submission has round-tripped it is quite possible that what is good has already been redefined.

So, yes, I understand you are trying to call attention to my 'loosey-goosey' usage earlier. But I am saying that when I said "good", it was relative to the temporal position it found itself in.

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6. taeric ◴[27 Jun 25 16:03 UTC] No.44397864{5}[source]▶
Then take my question as, "then what is a good templating example today?"

Dodging the obvious question in favor of discussing if we can make progress... feels less than good faith.

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7. 9rx ◴[27 Jun 25 16:11 UTC] No.44397950{6}[source]▶
I still consider the templating language I shared before, even at the time of this comment, to be good.

But, as recognized earlier, others may find it doesn't hold up to today's standards. "Good" is not only not a constant, but is also subjective. Do I really have to explain the entire universe here? Man.

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8. taeric ◴[27 Jun 25 16:24 UTC] No.44398079{7}[source]▶
You didn't share a templating language, though? You shared an example of a formatting/templating string, but didn't even indicate what level of format string it supported. Such that I don't know if you are sharing C's printf, bash's printf, PHP's... I can presume you don't intend to include CL's FORMAT. Even if I do have a softspot for it, myself.
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9. 9rx ◴[27 Jun 25 16:32 UTC] No.44398155{8}[source]▶
> You shared an example of a formatting/templating string

Which is, you guessed it, a language! Okay, yeah, I didn't dive in so deep as to provide a formal specification for the language, or whatever it is you were hoping for, but if you really want to take this to silly town, I'm going to tell you that what you saw is the only valid input for this language and only specify that, so, maybe, unless you are having fun with this comedy routine (in which case, carry on; I'm certainly still entertained!), you can read between the lines? The question asking if I need to explain the universe was rhetorical, implying that I am not going to do that.

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10. taeric ◴[27 Jun 25 18:31 UTC] No.44399098{9}[source]▶
My question to you, then, is if you think you contributed anything at all to this? Because, yeah, nothing there.
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11. 9rx ◴[27 Jun 25 19:14 UTC] No.44399446{10}[source]▶
Yes, it contributed to my enjoyment. I mean, that is all that can be contributed, fundamentally, so...