[Typo3-dev] TypoScript 2: a bit of a RFC

[Dimitri Tarassenko]

Martin,

On 11/30/05, Martin Kutschker <Martin.Kutschker at n0spam-blackbox.net> wrote:
> This is nice and all, but why are we talking about validation and all
> kinds of fancies like * (NO user will understand that) for (implicit)
> object creation, when we still allow such stuff?
>
> Talking about a new TS makes IMHO only sense if we get rid of such
> "weak" syntax.

First of all, validation was discussed for the TS _results_, i.e.
Elmar was going to validate the resulting PHP array, not the syntax
itself. In other words, irregardless of whether the array was created
by TS1, Object TS or TS2 validation is a different thing and we are
not talking about it right now.

Am I right in my assumption that you are rooting for something like

=== IMPLICIT ===
page(PAGE) {
   content(COA)
}

=== EXPLICIT (user template) ===
page.content[10](HTML) {
    value = "something"
}

?

In fact, page already has an explicit COA for headers.

> You cannot have it both. To be clean, the language mus be reasonable
> verbose. As some here beging start counting characters to me, this
> discussion becomes ridiculous. Sorry, but I don't think this is heading
> in a healthy direction.

There is some value in it, but verbosity does not bring readability or
clarity, as you imply. Pascal (my personal favorite) wasn't cleaner
than C. Regular expressions are ultimately un-verbose, but are quite
clean. I do agree that character count is irrelevant, but that goes
both ways - more verbose syntaxes are not necessarily cleaner. It's
the consistency and use of commonly accepted practices that count. PHP
designers were very wise in copying C-like control structures and
operators, for example.

--
Dimitri Tarassenko