Templating system choose

gistfile1.txt

Choosing a Templating System

1. Reusability

2. stand-alone

3. result-independent

4. simple, small, lightweight

5. clear template syntax

6. completely Unicode

7. good syntax-error-checking and good error-messages, to make the writing and debugging of templates easy

8. fast

9. basic functionality (from "category 4" above):
    placeholders/string-substitution
    conditionals
    loops
    macros (with parameters)
    restricted "embedded expressions" (formatting, arithmetics etc.)

10. additional functionality:
    inclusion of other templates (for reusability and "things" which are used in several templates)
    escaping-mechanism (e.g. for html: escape < > & ' ")
    (MAYBE) definition of the result-encoding
    (MAYBE) set template-variables

11. complain about undefined/non-existing variables in the template by default (Most template-engines 
    silently ignore undefined variables in the template. 
    But silently ignoring errors is bad, 
    and wrong data is much worse than no data and an error-message.)