[Tutor] Web-templating systems (was: Re: Generating static WEB sites)

[Winfried Tilanus]

On 04/25/2006 Kent Johnson wrote:
> Many. See this page, the sections Templating Engines, HTML Shorthand 
> Processors and HTML Generation class libraries:
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebProgramming

Hmmm,lets toss in my own problem:
I know the list mentioned above, and it is too long for me to test each
of the templating systems and evalute if they are right for me. So does
anybody have any suggestions for my situation, so I can make a shortlist?

I maintain a web-application that has its templates partly in a language
designed by a previous programmer (basicly a way to mix python code into
HTML) and has an other part of the templates programmed in python. I
would like to standarize these to a system that has the following
charactistics:

- First of all: easy to learn for web-desingers and translators. My
ideal would be something that feels like "As little programming als
possible", so the templates should be very close to the
HTML/Javascript/CSS and have some extentions to it. It should be well
documented (I don't mind to do some documantation on my own) and, if
possible, use existing standards.
- can (of course) include a supplied variable
- can make conditional statements
- can loop over a supplied list of lists or dictionaries
- possible to include templates
- can run under mod_python
- possible to generate snippets of html, without generating / sending of
a complete website
- possible to store the templates on disk or in a database
- open-source and actively maintained

I don't mind to write my own code for things like escaping, character
conversion, retrieving the template, sending of the resulting HTML,
error handling etc. The main goal is to make it as easy as possible for
webdesingers and / or translators to change the templates without having
any Python knowledge.

Any suggstion or discussion is welcome!

thanks
&
best wishes,

Winfried