Gavin Sinclair wrote:
>>Hopefully someone here fairly familiar with Perl can point me to a Ruby
>>HTML templating system that works like Perl's HTML::Template.  The next
>>closest perferred equivalent would be Perl Template Toolkit.  But I
>>really like HTML::Template a lot.
>>
>>I'm relatively new to Ruby (very slight dabbling since v1.6 circa 2001),
>> so my opinions may not hold water, but I don't really consider eRuby a
>>templating system.  Maybe someone can help me see how it's not anything
>>more than PHP or ASP except Ruby is used instead of PHP or VBScript...?
>>
>>Anyway, my main interest is in finding something like Perl's
>>HTML::Template.  Hopefully it exists somewhere in the Ruby world.
> 
> 
> I don't think there's a direct port, but there are some Ruby HTML
> templating libraries around (RDoc, cs/template, Amrita, ...).  Can you
> describe the benefits of the Perl solution?

I'm not sure I am able to accurately articulate what I perceive the 
benefits to be.  The main "advantage" that I feel -- it's kind of a 
"gut" thing -- is that the templates are, in a logical way, truly only 
markup.  There is no "code" per se, loosely speaking.  Strictly 
speaking, I realize there are the loop and conditional tags, but still 
it "feels" like only HTML markup.  I really like that because the 
separation between logic and presentation is about as good as it gets.

All my opinion of course but those that use HTML::Template in the Perl 
world, I think would agree.  I'm definitely going to check out some of 
the suggestions.  I've held this infatuation with Ruby for a long time, 
and even adopted some "Ruby ways" in my Perl coding for a few years now. 
  I've decided the only real way to bridge the gap is to force myself to 
stop using Perl (which I still really like) and just use Ruby full out. 
  So I'm trying to find things that ease the transition, like 
HTML::Template.  I can't afford a lot of downtime, which has been the 
biggest strike against using Ruby -- I'm pretty fast, tight and accurate 
in hitting targets using Perl (if I may be so bold).  But there are 
several "Wow!" factors in Ruby that keep me hanging around... wishing... :-)

-ceo