Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 17:34:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Wells <justin@fever.semiotek.com>
To: java-linux@java.blackdown.org
Subject: ANNOUNCING WebMacro 0.7


Hi everyone,

I thought this might be interesting to Java-Linux people, since it's free.

Justin

- - - - - - -

ANNOUNCING: WebMacro Java Servlet Toolkit


     WebMacro Java Servlet Toolkit, 

     EARLY BETA RELEASE (v 0.7) 
     under the GNU Public License (v2)


    Java Servlet development toolkit/library
       -and-
    HTML Template engine


    website: http://www.webmacro.org/
    mailing list: webmacro-request@webmacro.org

CHANGES: This release is much friendlier than 0.6 was

    -- Lots of bug fixes
    -- Configuration is much much easier now
    -- Logging has been improved



WebMacro is a Java server-side web template engine and servlet 
development framework . It is still very much in the development
stage, but we feel that it has progressed enough that people can
take a look at it. Actually we're hoping that the sooner people 
look at it, the faster we'll be able to get all the bugs out.

Please check it out, let us know what you think, and send in your
suggestions. Criticism helps too!

It's being distributed under the GPL (version 2). Other licenses are
available to commercial users who cannot deal with GPL'd code.

The WebMacro philosophy is basically:

   "Things that you don't care about should get out of your face."

Programmers should not have their code cluttered up with HTML and 
stylesheet junk. Web page designers should not have to put up with 
complex and scary looking program code. 

WebMacro lets programmers get back to programming--in a full fledged 
programming language; while letting page designers spend more time 
on appearances and less time on figuring out how to get more whitespace
out of a CGI script. 

It is similar to JSP and various other template languages, but with 
some key differences: 

   o The template  language is really compact and simple. It is not
     a verbose jumble of XML tags, and it does not look like C.

   o The template language is compatible with XML/SGML; unlike many
     other languages which blatantly violate the standard with <% 
     and friends.

   o WebMacro makes heavy use of reflection and introspection and is 
     compatible with the Beans component architecture. You really can
     just throw standard Java objects at the template language, and it
     will figure out what to do with them--no odd looking data structures
     to wedge your data into.

These differences are further analyzed on the website.

There are lots more differences besides that--please visit the website,
download the source, try it out, and join our mailing list. 

STATUS:

  -- Still very early on this project. We have about 70% of what we 
     want to implement for v1 done, but a long way to go.

  -- We know of lots of bugs in it. We're hoping some of you will 
     help us find and fix them :)

CONTACT:

    website: http://www.webmacro.org/ 

    list:    webmacro-request@webmacro.org

    me:      justin@webmacro.org


So far the development team includes Justin Wells (me) and Yuen-Ping Leung.

Justin Wells / justin@webmacro.org