Symphony.

We’re writing up an article on XSLT v.s. other templating languages and we need help form developers who have experience with other systems’ templating system. We will be supplying a single page example written in XSLT and would like help translating it to other templating lanuages for comparison.

Now THAT is intelligent marketing. So you need people with symphony and another templating experience, or just peopel with only non-symphony experience, ea EE?

I will be providing one or two HTML templates. All we’ll need is the page to be translated with other CMSs.

I’ll be providing a basic overview of the pages just in case other CMSs require elaboration due to possible implementation differences. If the overview is not enough, simply make assumptions whilst making the page – I’ll put those assumptions as addendum to the article.

For now, we’re looking at: Wordpress, MovableType, Expression Engine, Radiant CMS Drupal and Django. Other CMS comparisons are welcome.

Don’t forget Smarty. shudders

and Umbraco.

How about RoR (eruby) for the cool kids.

I’m sure almost any of us could do Wordpress. I could do Drupal… you know… if you guys really want to put me through that. If I remember correctly, Drupal gives you the choice between two PHP templating languages…

I’ve built several sites using Wordpress, MovableType and Expression Engine. Let me know if you want any input on those. I’d be glad to help with one.

I could probably do Interwoven TeamSite, but I’d need to check if that violates the terms of my employer’s license.

I’m happy to help out. I’ve wasted many an hour in WordPress, MovableType, Joomla, Expression Engine, and probably a few others as well.

I’m sad that I can’t help out with this. I’ve never used any of those templating engines, only my own or my company’s stuff. :(

weird…i thought i posted this yesterday, but maybe it didn’t go through? anyway, i use freemarker at work that i can try and translate things with…powerful, but cumbersome language to use…with some of the worst documentation

You might compare Textpattern as well.

@bzerangue: Good call. I can help with <txp:> too.

Cheers guys. I’ll get time to compile up the two HTML pages later this week/early next week. I’m not looking for a full-fledged working system, rather just the representing template pages.

This comparison might be a little bit tough. DS -> XML -> XSLT -> XHTML is a lot different than, say WordPress, with entries -> any PHP/template tags -> XHTML.

How do you plan on making it a parallel comparison?

A straight up comparison will definitely be difficult but I’m hoping to illustrate two points:

1. clarify the myth about XSLT being very complex to understand.
2. the different kinds of philosophies (in a fairly overview-esque format) that each CMSs take and hopefully highlight the positive workflow aspects in Symphony.

With regards to #1, if you take out the equation of template matching and replace it with a more procedural approach (xsl:for-each) - a road other CMSs take - XSLT isn’t that much more complex.

Many newcomers would be put off by the advanced use of concepts like key, matching templates and template overrides. I want to explain that XSLT covers the basics which all CMS template systems do but has the capacity to go way beyond. Most Symphonians has quickly ascended beyond the basic templating needs and tapped into the true power of XSLT. On one hand that’s great to see people tapping into the true power of the system. On the other hand this would give newbies the impression that XSLT is by design a complex language.

The eventual article will list all the CMSs and:

1. their strengths and weaknesses,
2. Example template page that roughly outputs something similar to the sample HTML
3. Note any differences/assumptions, i.e. plug-ins required, HTML tag outputs that cannot be changed without heavy customisation, etc

The comparison piece for Symphony I’ll provide will not utilise advanced XSLT techniques to equate itself to other templating platforms and hopefully ease newbies into XSLT.

The article will be posted as the first article for the new article area of this website.

Any suggestions/help on this article is definitely appreciated!

I have a few years of ASP.NET development, so if the example is appropriate I’ll write the equivalent using ASP.NET controls.

Anything going on already about this?

As mentioned elsewheres here;

It may even be helpful to follow the work of Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt of Mark Boulton Design as they try to fix Drupal for the next version: Drupal7 User Experience, also being documented on Flickr. Interestingly, they’re both using WordPress.