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Tools for Developing Presentation Templates

System

I'd be interested to know what tools everyone uses to develop TPLs. Do you just hand craft using your favorite text editor? We've been doing this here but it would be useful to have some assistance in separating out XML, Perl and Source code.

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Migrateduser

Well, the way I have been doing it is just by using Textpad to view and edit the code and adjusting things as changes are made. I don't know of any tool you can use that will seperate the Perl, source code, and XML since TeamSite is the one who developed the whole .tpl side. If you find something that does work though, could you please let me know.

How has your templating experience been so far? Any bumps in the road or things that you got stuck on but later figured out? I am just curious cause I would like to discuss how you use templates and what your results have been and compare them to mine. Thanks in advance.

Migrateduser

We have only developed a few templates as yet. The V5 data capture form (browser) is much better from the user's point of view and we are making extensive use of the Visual Format control. On presentation side, we have templates generating HTML and also JavaScript source files for inclusion in web pages with <SCRIPT src=. The main practical difficulty in developing presentation templates has been the care needed in coding. I adopt the approach of making very small adjustments and testing with a generation at each step. It's tempting to make a whole bunch of changes but it then usually takes much longer getting the bugs out.

Migrateduser

Hi Julian. Glad to hear that you guys are forging onward with your implementation and have done your 5.0 upgrade.

As you may have noticed when I was hanging out with you chaps, my preferred tool is vim (an improved version of vi), because it does reasonably decent syntax highlighting and works pretty much the same on windows and unix. What it doesn't do is handle the highlighting of perl embedded in xml properly, which really seems to be the crux of your question. I suspect that if I were thusly inclined I could hack together a vim syntax definition for .tpls and get the proper behaviour, but the itch isn't bad enough to scrath just yet.

The only editor I personally know of that handles this properly out of the box is BBEdit, which, sadly, is still a Mac only product.

One thing you can do to minimize your frustration is to separate as much of your perl code out into libraries as possible. I find that I am constantly doing the same sorts of things in presentation templates, so I've created a library which I keep under c:\iw-home\custom\perl, so the actual amount of perl code in my PTs is greatly reduced.

Migrateduser

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your reply. Please can you get in touch by email.

Julian

Migrateduser

A program that the Interwoven instructor spoke of is called XML Spy. I have gotten it at home and use it occasionally. It does the higlighting and a few other very useful/cool features. I have yet to try and see what it does with PERL code, but so far it is a very nice program. You can download a trial version (www.xmlspy.com) and possibly buy it later if it does what you need/want. Just thoguht you would like to know about it.

dwhitney

One other very handy tool is ultra edit.
It's got all sorts of really nice built in functions that you want, and has a built in Save to FTP function that is really nice.

Migrateduser

Thanks. I'll have a look.

Julian