XUL Talk:Templates Plan

Comments User:Conor325

Separation of query and condition

Separating the query from the conditions would seem to remove efficiency, for example, for a server applying conditions to reduce a scoped data set to a managable size. The current template rules combine query and condition in the condition clause. Perhaps, rather than view this as a short hand for two separate things, let it stay atomic and let new mechanisms emulate the combination. Separating conditions also raises the bar for version 2. Certainly RDF templates could use better condition support, but is it a blocker before deploying a new data-format independent mechanism? Leaving conditions to the query mechanism would isolate this shortcoming in the RDF mechanism, an infrastructure that could be considered separately from making a data format agnostic template builder. Perhaps query-wise, it need never change as it may be superceded by a SPARQL query processor for comprehensive RDF processing.

RDF caching and reloading

I think security prevents a non-chrome page from reloading rdf datasources right now. Does the above imply that in v2 a template will support a "reload" mechanism for named datasources? There may be security issues with reloading chrome etc but perhaps you only allow reloading of remote data sources.

RDF templates and RDF loading

A big shortcoming of rdf templates now is that they seem to load data sources synchronously, blocking the browser. They seem to load the datasource as part of template parsing which doesn't allow a page to register as a builder listener and so catch when the first build of an element completes. As part of version 2, I think loading should be asynchronous and there should be an event like "datasourceLoaded".