Typist began as a prototype and mental exercise that is inspired by the template engines from in MT and TypePad.
I spend most of my development time working with Movable Type and to a lessor extent. The vast majority of my Perl code is for Movable Type and when its not its creating an open source module for CPAN that works like something in MT.
When I do have to develop something outside of Movable Type I reach for CGI::Application and Data::ObjectDriver which are quite similar to what MT provides. The one thing I miss the though is MT's template engine.
Even MT's application screen are generated using HTML::Template. HTML::Template is fast, lightweight and separates logic and layout. The problem is the separation of logic from layout is done to the point where templates are almost brain dead. Almost everything but the most basic logic must be done before processing a template in the application code. Want to list 5 instead of 10 items here? You have to go back to your coder. Want to change the sort order. Back to your code. Want to pre-select a pulldown menu item? Each option needs to be wrapped in an TMPL_IF statement. To me this makes development tedious and difficult. It also makes reuse of template layouts difficult if not impossible.
I've looked at other Perl template engines too. My problem with template engines such as Mason and Template Toolkit is that it requires the template designer to know Perl or something similar to it. It also makes writing crap code (a technical term) too easy. (Broaden the scope a moment PHP suffers from this same issues.)
To me the MT style of template engine is a great balance of flexibility, power and ease of use. It keeps application logic and layout neatly separated and can be (and has been) used by many coding neophytes without knowing a line of Perl code. With a bit of Perl code it can be extended using easy to re-distribute plugins. The whole implementation of a tag used throughout many templates can be easily swapped out and a template developer wouldn't even know it.
Granted I'm biased by my background, but I think this style of template engine provides and an option that is currently missing from Perl programmer's toolkit.
I spend most of my development time working with Movable Type and to a lessor extent. The vast majority of my Perl code is for Movable Type and when its not its creating an open source module for CPAN that works like something in MT.
When I do have to develop something outside of Movable Type I reach for CGI::Application and Data::ObjectDriver which are quite similar to what MT provides. The one thing I miss the though is MT's template engine.
Even MT's application screen are generated using HTML::Template. HTML::Template is fast, lightweight and separates logic and layout. The problem is the separation of logic from layout is done to the point where templates are almost brain dead. Almost everything but the most basic logic must be done before processing a template in the application code. Want to list 5 instead of 10 items here? You have to go back to your coder. Want to change the sort order. Back to your code. Want to pre-select a pulldown menu item? Each option needs to be wrapped in an TMPL_IF statement. To me this makes development tedious and difficult. It also makes reuse of template layouts difficult if not impossible.
I've looked at other Perl template engines too. My problem with template engines such as Mason and Template Toolkit is that it requires the template designer to know Perl or something similar to it. It also makes writing crap code (a technical term) too easy. (Broaden the scope a moment PHP suffers from this same issues.)
To me the MT style of template engine is a great balance of flexibility, power and ease of use. It keeps application logic and layout neatly separated and can be (and has been) used by many coding neophytes without knowing a line of Perl code. With a bit of Perl code it can be extended using easy to re-distribute plugins. The whole implementation of a tag used throughout many templates can be easily swapped out and a template developer wouldn't even know it.
Granted I'm biased by my background, but I think this style of template engine provides and an option that is currently missing from Perl programmer's toolkit.
