I happen to use FreeMarker, because I work on CongoCC, which uses it, but I
don't work on any FreeMarker codebase itself. I'm not speaking for Jonathan,
but my view on "why not join hands in here ...? " might be answered in part by
comments Dániel Dékány made - "I think the next logical step in FM3 is
replacing the whole parser" - not exactly a small amount of work, but something
that's already been done in the project Jonathan linked to. If the interest of
the community is in moving the technology forwards, then that work would seem a
suitable starting point, rather than an old branch which seems very out of date
but just happens to be in the same repository. You'll see that for whatever
reason, it's hard to innovate in the Apache project because the challenges are
not only technical (getting some work done) but also social (getting others to
accept to work with it, or with you). What are the recent innovations in Apache
FreeMarker, apart from working a bit on the margins like servlet API-related
stuff (hardly core to a template engine)? I'm only a recent subscriber to this
list so I've only seen discussion of that kind of thing, but happy to be
informed about other more substantial innovations. Now it's a very mature
project that perhaps doesn't need much in the way of innovation, but for me the
new syntax changes in Jonathan's project (the ability to use e.g. #if ... /#if
instead of [#if...] [/#if] in many contexts) is a readability win, even if it
seems a small change. Not sure how much work would be required to retrofit that
in Apache FreeMarker, but I doubt anyone will step up to do that kind of thing.
So if one's primary interest is in the technology and advancing the state of
the art, one tries to work with whatever is the best of breed in an area. If
one's interest is more in being part of a community, then one works with the
community, no matter the technical and social limitations that this entails. In
that case, the technology / technical solutions seem secondary.
Regards,
Vinay Sajip
On Monday, 5 February 2024 at 06:22:15 GMT, Taher Alkhateeb
<ta...@pythys.com.invalid> wrote:
Hello Jonathan,
Why yes if you recall I actually replied to you in that thread, and I was
asking you why not join hands in here instead of maintaining a fork and
confusing everyone as to what's going on not to mention fragmenting an already
small community?
Regards,
Taher Alkhateeb
On Sunday, February 04, 2024 23:27 +03, Jonathan Revusky <revu...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi Taher (and everyone else).
A couple of months ago, I announced the availability of a more advanced
FreeMarker 3 version here: https://github.com/freemarker/freemarker3
Really, the bottom line is that if you do want to get involved in hacking
the FreeMarker code, this is the one you should get involved in. This is a
continuation of work by the original author (ME) and if you get in there
and have whatever questions about how the code works, you have the
collaboration of the original author (ME).
If you work on Apache FreeMarker 2.x or 3.x you're working on a much more
primitive, older version of the code. For one thing, the FreeMarker 3 that
I point to is rewritten to use a much more powerful parser generator, which
is CongoCC. And this really has allowed quite a streamlining of the code.
Just look at what the CongoCC grammar looks like:
https://github.com/freemarker/freemarker3/tree/master/src/parser And
compare that with what the legacy JavaCC grammar looks like for Apache
FreeMarker:
https://github.com/apache/freemarker/blob/2.3-gae/freemarker-core/src/main/javacc/freemarker/core/FTL.jj
Just eyeball the two and think about which one you would rather work with!
I can be quite objective because I am basically the author of both versions!
On Sat, Feb 3, 2024 at 9:20 AM Taher Alkhateeb <ta...@pythys.com.invalid>
wrote:
> Hello, we were just having a discussion about this:
>
> https://lists.apache.org/thread/2p3521br9jnp9ww1f5vf80l90fntmfdf
>
> Essentially the way I understood it, it's better to focus on 2 and get
> things done as 3's future is not very clear and requires a lot of work from
> developers intimate with the code base.
>
Look, the real truth of the matter is that working with either Apache
FreeMarker 2 codebase or the 3, it's just an exercise in necrophilia.
Nothing meaningful has been done for ages and, at this point, there is just
about no prospect of anything happening. By all means, you could get in
there and try to clean it all up and so on, but frankly, your prospects of
ever catching up to the state of the FreeMarker 3 that I have pointed to...
it's quite bleak really.
I mean, really, c'mon, even just reading between the lines in Daniel's
response to this question about FreeMarker development, you can get the
feeling that it's really just a waste of time. The thing is dead and Daniel
is not hardly even trying to hide this.
But anyway, 'nuff said. I just would tell you to do your due diligence and
figure out which way is up! I would be delighted to have collaborators, and
you would be collaborating with the person who is, to all intents and
purposes, the original author of the tool.
It really ought to be a very easy decision.
Best Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
>
> On February 3, 2024 10:51:15 AM GMT+03:00, Alon Ziv
> <nola...@google.com.INVALID> wrote:
> >Specifically - is there anything contributors can help with to get this
> >completed?
>
