SGML (of which HTML is an application) has always been a way to serialize trees. XML made it clearer (by simplifying the syntax), but it's nothing new.

Most templating systems do treat HTML as text, but not all of them. I use AxKit, a web framework based on XML and XSLT

XSLT is a language specifically designed for tree manipulations. Not exactly every tree manipulation: it is more oriented towards down-translations (from structure to presentation), but it is Turing-complete, and I've used it successfully in a number of occasions.

It is not compact, it is not "quick & dirty", but I find it to be the easiest way (for me) to manipulate XML data.

You can use XML::LibXML to parse HTML documents, and XML::LibXSLT to transform them.

And (referring to a previous post) some Web graphics/designers are starting to learn XSLT, since they can use it independently from the language used by the developer.

-- 
        dakkar - Mobilis in mobile

Most of my code is tested...

Perl is strongly typed, it just has very few types (Dan)

In reply to Re: HTML Templating as Tree Rewriting: Part I: "If Statements" by dakkar
in thread HTML Templating as Tree Rewriting: Part I: "If Statements" by princepawn

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.