Greetings,
I thought this might be of interest to people on this list.
FreeMarker is a 100% java library of some vintage. It was originally
designed for the java servlet space, to keep presentation logic (HTML
stuff) separate from the back-end application logic. However, it is a
very useful tool for any application that needs to generate text. Other
well-known tools in this space are Velocity and WebMacro.
FreeMarker 2.3 introduces some powerful new XML processing functionality
that should make it an appealing alternative to XSLT for many people. We
have introduced some new directives -- <#visit> and <#recurse> -- that
provide functionality roughly equivalent to the <xsl:apply-templates/>
functionality.
We believe that FreeMarker will be a lot easier for most people to learn
and use than XSLT. The basic programming language available in
FreeMarker templates is much more readable (less verbose) than XSLT and
the underlying procedural logic will come more naturally to most people
than the declarative/functional programming model embodied by XSLT.
We don't have rigorous benchmarks ('rigorous benchmarks' may be an
oxymoron anyway) but initial indications are that FreeMarker is a lot
faster than XSLT. And I mean *a lot* faster. For example, FreeMarker's
manual is maintained in a canonical Docbook XML format. Previously, we
generated the final HTML output using using some XSLT stylesheets by
Norman Walsh. The XSLT transformation was rewritten in FreeMarker, and
runs 15x faster than the previous XSLT-based system using Saxon. Also,
the FreeMarker templates are less verbose and seem more maintainable
than the XSLT stuff was. You can see the FM-generated FM manual here:
http://freemarker.org/docs/index.html and the chapter specifically on
using the tool for XML processing is here:
http://freemarker.org/docs/xgui.html
Though the latest version is still labelled a preview, the codebase is
really quite solid at this point. The main reason for the preview label
is that we are still more open at this stage to changes and proposals
than we would be if this were labeled release candidate or final. We are
*very* interested in feedback from hard-core XML and XSLT type people.
This is your chance to have some input into how an XML transformation
tool should work. (I suppose most of you never got any input into how
XSLT works. :-))
Best Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
XML transformation with FreeMarker http://freemarker.org/docs/xgui.html
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list