[ic] ITL functions

[Daniel Browning]

* jeff at hisgirlfridays.com <jeff at hisgirlfridays.com> [2005-09-15 17:39]:
> Hello,
> 
> I am just finishing up an experimental project of sorts.  To complete my latest IC 
> project, I determined that I was not going to use any of Foundation, and furthermore, I 
> was going to use ITL as much as possible.
> 
> As the project comes to a close, I'd say it worked damn well, with the exception of one 
> thing.  I don't know how to do a function that contains ITL.  For example, I found 
> that I cut-and-pasted large blocks of ITL in numerous places.  Now I should refactor those 
> blocks into function calls, but usertags consist of perl, not ITL.  I might be able to 
> make a generic usertag wrapper that called functions via include or some other kludgy 
> mechanism, but before I go off on a ridiculous tangent I was curious as to how some of the 
> experts here might address this.

I think that it would be very nice to have a simple, elegant argument
passing scheme for ITL.  It would be useful even for short, simple
ITL snippets that aren't ready to become perl code yet.  Something like a
redesigned [component].

Throwing out some ideas...

[call-itl fn=foo a=1 b=2]

 * Sets up special environment variables, accessible via [arg a], [arg b]
   (or scratch vars if we don't want to start a new namespace.)

 * Does an [include] itl_lib/<function>.itl (foo.itl in this case) (with
   interpolation of argument variables as above) -- or maybe an
   interpolate_html().

It would probably be difficult to get the order of interpolation just right.

-- 
Daniel Browning <db at kavod.com> - Kavod Technologies.  Random Fortune:
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.