nk4um

Thanks your reply makes sense to me - I like the idea that NetKernel is based on a few basic principles, yet easy to extend and build upon that basic core right.  So I understand why you wouldn''t want to throw tons of redundant stuff in there. 

(I *don''t* need Velocity or SiteMesh for the Cocoon replacement you and I spoke of on the phone btw - this question was me looking down the road whether it could provide benefit on other systems that happen to use these other tools).

We provide freemarker really as a string composition runtime - similar to XRL, the XML composition runtime.  If you see my answer to the question on the "Tab discovery" here - then maybe it shows that there is actually some seriously powerful web architecture available just by composing the tools already there in NK.

As I think I''ve mentioned to you - XRL is very fully featured and works very nicely for HTML site generation - for example www.1060research.com is dynamic and the top level is XRL composition.

I guess its a different way of thinking - we don''t go in for monolithic frameworks - we think in terms of resources and use the appropriate tool or composition of tools to give us what we want.  But for sure, these frameworks can almost certainly be integrated if you have legacy that needs them.

P.

May not be worth your while (not 100% sure how popular it is), but just thought I''d mention we''d chosen Velocity as our "standard" template engine where I work...  if NetKernel had Velocity support alongside it''s Freemarker support that would have been attractive to us.

(no biggie I''m actually thinking I may be able to study the NK freemarker module and pretty easily make a Velocity one - hopefully I haven''t just jinxed myself nothing''s ever as easy as I hope :).

Another UI-related tool we''d standardized on is called "SiteMesh" - u familiar?  It''s really interesting in the way that it "decorates'' an html response via a filter in "AOP-like" fashion.

In our case you could be allowing an "overlay" to do the same to an html response...  in some ways it seems a great match.

OTOH I think I see NK examples doing similar things using XSL against XHTML (really it can do the same as SiteMesh I think the real appeal of SiteMesh is for people who don''t know XSL).

Don''t know that other people are clamoring for these but it just so happens they would be appealing where I work...

(i.e. more of "wish list" items than "must haves" :)