in reply to Re^2: Reusable template components with HTML::Template
in thread Reusable template components with HTML::Template

I consider reuse within a single project to be a sufficient win, so each project gets its own copy of whatever template fragments that project needs. This also allows per-project look-and-feel tweakage.

Fair enough, and definitely a win over hand-coding table loops wherever they're needed, but:

  1. Isn't per-project presentation tweakage a CSS problem, not an HTML problem? (Yes, I'm aware that I'm being a bit of an ivory-tower theoretician here, and that CSS isn't a universally applicable solution, but still.)
  2. Per-project templates don't seem to mix well with global code (I presume your tableHTML function is in a module somewhere) -- if your code changes in such a way that it needs an updated table.tmpl, you have to remember to change all the template copies, and that sounds like a monumental pain in the ass if production code is affected.
Of course, I'm just picking nits here. In general, I like the idea.

--
F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
Found a typo in this node? /msg me
% man 3 strfry

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^4: Reusable template components with HTML::Template
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Aug 04, 2004 at 23:28 UTC

    if your code changes in such a way that it needs an updated table.tmpl, you have to remember to change all the template copies, and that sounds like a monumental pain in the ass if production code is affected.

    That is exactly why I said that this technique is a demonstration of presentation logic seeping back into the application. It's why I argue for a more powerful template language.

    Having per-project presentation tweaked solely by CSS is nice in theory, but doesn't cut it in practice. That does not mean you should mix presentational markup into your generated HTML; you should still generate semantic markup and use CSS to style it — the most immediately obvious benefit is that you won't need to touch your templates as often.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
Re^4: Reusable template components with HTML::Template
by dws (Chancellor) on Aug 05, 2004 at 05:00 UTC

    1. Isn't per-project presentation tweakage a CSS problem, not an HTML problem?

    CSS is a problem all by itself. But yes, you can do a lot of look-and-feel adjustment by first being careful to emit the right attributes so that you the right hooks to hang CSS on, and then tweaking CSS. But it's not a 100% solution, especially if you decide to do things like emit Javascript for dynamically sorting tables.

    2. Per-project templates don't seem to mix well with global code.

    I'll cop to a bias here. I used to worry a lot about cross-project code, portable libraries, building frameworks, and so forth. But the time investment never seemed to pay off. Now I worry a lot more about making things usable within a project. YMMV, but worrying about use before worrying about reuse has paid off for me.

[reply]

      worrying about use before worrying about reuse has paid off for me.

      It's called YAGNI. :-)

      Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]

In Section Meditations