[ANN] MasterView rails-optimized (x)html friendly template e

Rails
1

MasterView is a rails-optimized (x)html friendly template engine plugin
that
provides another option to the existing rails view templates (rhtml and
rxml). The main idea is to provide a template engine that would provide
all
the power of layouts, partials, and rails helpers but still be
editable/styleable in a WYSIWYG editor. It was also a major goal that
the
syntax of these attribute directives be very similar to rails helpers so
that one could intuitively start using MasterView with little learning
curve
other than knowing rails. MasterView was inspired by Amrita, Kwartz,
Tapestry, Zope/PHP TAL, Liquid, and Web Objects but designed with a
fresh
approach and specifically targetted for rails users.

Video
A short video which demos the basic operation is available at
demo_shorthttp://masterview.org/videos/masterview_quick_start.html

Screenshots and illustrations
http://masterview.org/media_list.html
http://masterview.org/videos/masterview_quick_start.html
MasterView is released under MIT open source licensing.

Main site: http://masterview.org/
Rubyforge Project site: http://rubyforge.org/projects/masterview

Goals

  • Create/extend a template engine for rails that would be XHTML
    friendly and thus could be edited/styled with a WYSIWYG HTML editor
    even
    late in development without breaking template.

  • Keep it simple. DRY. No extra config files, simple syntax with ruby
    flavor.

  • Design it specifically for ruby and rails. Use the full power and
    not be limited in its capabilities over what can be done with ERb
    (rhtml)

  • Work nicely with layouts, partials, and rails html helpers.

  • Reduce complexity, work with existing rails code, no extra view
    logic or hashes than what is used by ERb (rhtml). Scaffold generate
    initial
    templates or work from existing html prototype. Make scaffolds nicely
    styled
    and easily useable for production with minor changes.

  • Reduce the numbers of files, simplifying editing. Define partials
    and layouts naturallyl right in the template, no need to go to
    another file.

  • Preview in browser without running an app. Allow for dummy data in
    the template so that the page can be viewed and styled independently
    of the
    application.

  • Performance equal to ERb (rhtml)

Release Notes

Release 0.2.3

Changed default development settings for enable_admin_pages and
enable_view_rhtml = true (false in production) to make it easy
for new users to get up and running. Added check_box, radio_button,
select, collection_select directives. Refactor attr_value parsing
to be more robust taking into account nested objects. Internal rework
of directive handling to support alternate namespaces for directives.
Std app directives dir at rails app/masterview/directives will be
automatically added to MasterView load path if exists.

Release 0.2.2

Maintenance release - fixed problem when rails encounters exception
in either compiling or involving a RuntimeError and MasterView is
configured

to not generate rhtml to the file system. Fixed by extending rails
TemplateError class to check for source in MasterView and then fallback
to file system.

Release 0.2.1

Added Mongrel support, a new image_tag directive and some additional
illustrations and links to videos. Also javascript_include and
stylesheet_link directives can infer the path from the src attribute if
the
attr_value is empty. Also added additional logging around startup and
the
version of MasterView that is running and a new admin page to visually
see
what MasterView features are currently loaded (tidy,auto parsing on
change,
parse on startup, reading rhtml direct from masterview (eliminating
rhtml
file generation))

Visit the online documentation page at http://masterview.org/ for
screenshots, illustrations, complete installation and usage information.

We would love to hear your feedback and ideas around this project! Visit
the
rubyforge project http://rubyforge.org/projects/masterview to join the
users mailing list or to add yourself to the announce list to receive
future
announcements. Check out the
videohttp://masterview.org/videos/demo_short.htmlto see MasterView
in action!

Thanks for your time!!

MasterView Development Team
Jeff B. and Deb Lewis