= Template components =

They should:

 * Be format-agnostic (not specific to HTML nor XML);
 * Allow custom tags;
 * Allow access to external parameters (through either dynamic bindings, or explicit injection); and,
 * Have a logical syntax.



----

Existing systems under investigation are:

 * Lisp
   * [http://www.bitmuse.com/code/btl.html BTL]
   * [http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-emb/ CL-EMB]
   * [http://common-lisp.net/project/clhp/ CLHP]
   * [http://weitz.de/html-template/ HTML-TEMPLATE]
   * [http://homepage.mac.com/svc/kpax/ KPAX]
   * [http://www.cliki.net/text-template text-template]
   * [http://random-state.net/files/trivial-template.lisp trivial-template]
   * [http://www.nicklevine.org/play/xhtml.lisp xhtml.lisp]
   * [http://sourceforge.net/projects/lsp XLSP (a.k.a. "lisp server pages" or lsp)]
   * [http://common-lisp.net/project/bese/yaclml.html yaclml]
 * Other
   * [http://ahts.sourceforge.net/ AHTS]
   * [http://www.cheetahtemplate.org/ Cheetah]
   * [http://www.clearsilver.net/ Clearsilver]
   * [http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/templates/ The Django template language]
   * [http://www.alcyone.com/pyos/empy/ EmPy]
   * [http://htmltmpl.sourceforge.net/ htmltmpl]
   * [http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/ JSP (Java Server Pages)]
   * [http://webware.sourceforge.net/Webware/PSP/Docs/ PSP (Python Server Pages)]
   * [http://www.smarty.net/ Smarty]
   * [http://spyce.sourceforge.net/ Spyce (Python)]
   * [http://template-toolkit.org/ Template Toolkit]

Systems no longer under consideration (at least for syntax) are:

|| '''System''' || '''Reason'''              ||
|| CL-WHO       || Not a markup language     ||
|| HTOUT        || Not a markup language     ||
|| HUNCHENTOOT  || No template functionality ||
|| LML          || Not a markup language     ||
|| LML2         || Not a markup language     ||
|| Weblocks     || No template functionality ||

Note, however, that LML2 does claim to have user-extensible tags.  It would be good to see how they did it.  Weblocks also has a ''render'' architecture that may be good.