"Chris" <anon> wrote in message
news:44369a97$0$25024$ m...
>I distribute an app that uses JSP. Users edit the JSP to customize it for
>their environment. At the moment, we just call plain Java objects within
>the JSP, but users get confused when they have to work around the Java
>snippets. So we've got the classic how-to-separate-code-from-presentation
>problem.
>
> We could use Velocity or FreeMarker to insert dynamic data into
> easy-to-edit html templates. Most of our competitors, though, output XML
> and then have the users do CSS or XSLT to generate the actual html.
>
> Does anyone have insights on what the easiest approach is for your average
> user? I have no experience with XSLT, but it strikes me as much harder to
> handle than a FreeMarker-style template. On the other hand, XML is really
> convenient in lots of situations.
In my experience, you'll encounter a lot of people who are really
talented at web design (e.g. XHTML and CSS), but know almost nothing about
anything else (this includes XML, XSLT, Java, etc.) For these people I
recommend the template solution, as it's as close to XHTML that they're used
to as possible.
What you could do, if some of your clients want to "take advantage of
XML", is to use both XML and templates. That is, your product outputs the
dynamic content into an XML file. The clients can do whatever they want with
this XML file, including passing it to your bundled templating system. Your
templating system allows the web designer to write mostly XHTML, with some
slots for where the dynamic data should appear. Your templating engine
gathers this dynamic data from the XML file.
>
> Also, does anyone have insight into performance issues?
I don't. Why don't you try some benchmarking?
- Oliver
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