RE: html macro library

I'll take the short answer, in so far as you know, to be: "No.  There
are no macro libraries for HTML code".  Thanks much for your answer.

In response to your other questions/points....

I am trying to avoid writing html by hand.  I don't care to remember (or
use some reference manual) html syntax.  Additionally, it's the
inconsistencies I'd inevitably introduce into the HTML hand coding those
tags I'm trying to avoid.  By using a macro library, all of my html
would be correct every time.  I would get the additional validation from
Velocity since Velocity would complain if I call a macro that doesn't
exist or call one with the wrong number of arguments.  

I agree that a library to handle every tag and every possible
combination would be prohibitive.  I think the "80/20" rule could apply
here and would then end up coding much less html by hand.  My
experiments to start such a library seem doomed as I would really need
to be able to applied recursively so as to embed one tag in another. 

The people authoring these pages will, by definition, be familiar with
velocity.  It's unreasonable to ask a web author to use a tool like
Velocity to generate the web content but not be trained in the tools
they are using.  

I'd leave knowing what the macros did to a documentation/training issue.
At present anyway, the macros are clear text and believe we'd be able to
figure them out.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lev Epshteyn [mailto:levik@xxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 11:17 AM
To: 'Velocity Users List'
Subject: RE: html macro library


Perhaps I'm missing something, but what would be the point of such a
thing?

You would never create a library that supports all the features of HTML
properly (what if you want your link to have a target? a class? a
style?) - you will 
inevitably end up doing some of the HTML "by hand", resulting in
inconsistencies.

And really, how is 
        <a href="$link">$text</a> 
any worse than
        #html_href($link, $text)

The first is pretty obvious even to someone not very familiar with
Velocity, the second is puzzling even if you know what VTL and macros
are - until you see the code of the macro you don't know what it's
doing.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Bolton [mailto:kbolton@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 11:07 AM
To: velocity-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: html macro library


Has anyone developed a macro library for standard html items?  For
example:
 
#macro (html_href $link $text)

<a href='$link'>$text</a>

#end 

 
--------------------
Kevin Bolton
Paychex Inc 
(585) 216-0808
 <mailto:kbolton@paychex>  
 



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the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, 
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