MasterView Template Engine

Rails
1

Hey guys,

I’m considering migrating to masterview as the template engine for my
rails app.
Though the advantage of being able to edit the views using standard
wysiwyg tools is great, is it a good idea
to convert existing rhtml files to html and use masterview?
Also, is there support for the masterview project and is it advisable
to use it for commercial projects?

Help needed!!

mj…
(Mrityunjay)

2

On 3/27/07, Mrityunjay I. [email protected] wrote:

Mrityunjay,

We’re glad that you are considering MasterView for your template
solution,
we feel that is one of the most productive ways to develop sites and
also
allows non-programmer designers to have an active role in the
development
process. In addition to the current feature set, we have some exciting
functionality in the pipeline which will wrap lots of functionality into
simple to use directives (namely ajax’d sortable pageable grids,
calendars,
menu widgets, …), so things are going to get even more fun in the
coming
year!

As to the question is it good to convert from rhtml to html, you can use
rhtml and MasterView html templates side by side in the same project,
however to be able to take advantage of the WYSIWYG features across all
your
pages, you would most likely want to convert some or all of your pages
into
MasterView html. There’s been a suggestion by one of our users to
automate
this process further and it is on the todo list for future enhancements.

As for the safety of moving to MasterView, this is a safe transition and
you
can easily go back to pure rhtml if you ever want to discontinue use of
MasterView. MasterView currently processes the html templates and
creates
the corresponding rhtml files at runtime (layouts, partials, etc). By
default it doesn’t generate to the file system, but that is easlily
changed
in a configuration option. You can also manually invoke the parser (vie
rake
command) to have it generate the rhtml files. These rhtml files do not
depend on anything in the MasterView system, so you can even deploy
these
(without MasterView) to any rails server. My point is that even though
you
are starting with MasterView html templates, you are not locked in and
you
can easily get out the rhtml files and use them directly (even without
MasterView) if at anytime you want to go back to the pure rhtml way.

We have designed MasterView to allow custom directives to be added and
developed by the community so you the project can be enhanced in what
ever
ways the community takes it. We’ll be putting up a site later this year
to
make it easy for users to share directives.

To the question of support, in addition to the support of fellow
MasterView
users, Deb Lewis and I are the primary core developers and support team
for
MasterView project. We try to support and help our users through our
mailing
lists on Rubyforge http://rubyforge.org/mail/?group_id=1290

Note that MasterView is an open source project so all the source is
available for your use from Rubyforge.

If you desire commercial support for MasterView, contact Deb or me and
we
would be happy to set up a support contract for your company. Deb’s
company,
Glaivestone Software, provides consulting and services in a variety of
technologies including MasterView. My company, Inspired Horizons,
performs
training, mentoring, and consulting specializing in Ruby on Rails /
MasterView. Links to our sites are below.

As additional questions come up, feel free to post them to our
masterview-users mailing list or of course you may contact us directly.
We’ll do our best to help you.

Deb’s company, Glaivestone Software - http://glaivestone.com/
Jeff’s company, Inspired Horizons Ruby on Rails training and consultancy

http://inspiredhorizons.com/

Blessings,

Jeff B., MasterView development team