I needed ~ to make my textareas work.  Why would one ever want the
unfiltered behavior for textarea and pre tags?  Why doesn't haml
filter those tags automatically?  IMHO haml breaks those tags and I
shouldn't have to use a filter to get the behavior I would expect.

I think I should be able to say:
= textarea :user, :profile

and get the same result as is currently returned by
~ textarea :user, :profile

The new methods may improve the haml source code, but from my
perspective as a user, they don't improve ease of use or readiblity of
my code.

Thanks,
-- Jeff

On Feb 6, 3:30 am, Nathan Weizenbaum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That's right, folks, Haml is deprecating one of its commands: the
> (apparently little-known) "~". Once useful for allowing people to create
> whitespace-sensitive blocks of text inline, and styliciously handling
> <textarea> and <pre> tags, "~" is now more or less rendered redundant
> with the introduction of filters
> (http://groups.google.com/group/haml/browse_thread/thread/5ed706013a47...)
> and a clever use of helper functions.
>
> "~" had two different functions. First, it could be used as an
> alternative to "=" that would replace all newlines in
> whitespace-sensitive tags such as <pre> and <textarea> with the HTML
> characters for newlines, thus preserving both whitespace /and/ style.
> This function can now be done literally with a function:
> find_and_preserve. For example, what was once:
>
> ~ text_area :user, :profile
>
> becomes
>
> = find_and_preserve(text_area :user, :profile)
>
> There's also another, related helper function, just called "preserve",
> that removes all newlines period, without regard for what tag is where.
>
> The second function was to precede a nested block of text, which would
> ensure that all whitespace in that text was preserved. The idea of doing
> stuff with nested blocks of text might sound a lot like filters to
> you... and it does to us, too, which is why we're replacing that
> function with an actual filter.  The "preserve" filter serves the same
> purpose as the "~" on its own. For instance, what was
>
> %pre
>   ~
>     1
>      2
>       3
>        4
>
> is now
>
> %pre
>   :preserve
>     1
>      2
>       3
>        4
>
> The "~" command will still be around, although undocumented, as of the
> next release of Haml (1.5). If you use it, Haml will spit out a warning,
> but it will work. However, in the release after 1.5, it will be gone for
> good, so update your views as soon as possible.
>
> You may be wondering why we're deprecating this at all. "Sure, Nathan,
> it's like a filter," you say, "but is it really worth it to get rid of
> it altogether?" Well, if you were to ask this, I would reply that yes,
> yes it is worth it. There are several reasons to get rid of this:
>
>    1. It cluttered up the code. Checking for preserved text necessitated
>       more than its fair share of logic precisely where we wanted the
>       least logic. When we do eventually remove it, the code will become
>       much neater.
>    2. It was redundant. Everything it did could, and probably should,
>       have been done with filters or helpers.
>    3. It cluttered up Haml. Haml aims to be simple and easy to learn,
>       and having lots of obscure commands doesn't help that at all. This
>       is particularly true when the commands intuitively seem like they
>       should be something other than commands (see point 2).
>
> We don't like deprecating stuff, and this is probably the only thing
> we'll be deprecating in a good while, so don't worry about your views
> breaking beyond this (if you use this... how many of you folks even knew
> this command existed?).
>
> - Nathan


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