Re: [gmt-dev] evolving GMT in a fully open process that allows others to

["Jorn Bettin" <jorn.bettin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Again, I would like to make a point about Velocity here.
> Velocity has a very reasonable template-editor plugin for Eclipse. Color
> coding, delimiting if-then-else blocks etc. included. Only if your target
> language happens to be PHP, the plugin is somtimes confused because the
two
> syntaxes are very similar. :-(

This is a nice example that emphasises the importance/unimportance of
concrete syntax.
- The concrete syntax is not irrelevant. You *do* want to be able to be able
to easily exchange/modify concrete syntax  to avoid issues as described
above
- You *don't* want your fundamental tool architecture to depend on a
concrete syntax

Both points need to be considered in our tool achitecture.

> The other good thing is that Velocity can generate code/text from anything
> Java. It can look at any object that you pass to a template and execute
any
> method on it. Therefore, if your argument to the template happens to be a
> model or metamodel, or some other object structure that happens to be your
> domain  model, then Velocity can use it. Writing good templates is a
> completely different story of course :-)

This is where I think we should start talking about "best practices for
template languages" as a subset of "best practices for MDSD". Just as C++
provides users with powerful features, some powerful template languages
provide features that are dangerous to use. We shoud not provide/disable
features that we consider dangerous. How about collaboratively writing a
paper on this topic?

Jorn

Jorn Bettin
jorn.bettin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.softmetaware.com
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