No HTML tags should be in the Perl code

This is a nice dream. However, HTML won't allow it. The best example is in specifying an option in a select list:

<select name="options">
    <option>1</option>
    <option>2</option>  <!-- select this one -->
    <option>3</option>
</select>
[download]

If HTML allowed you to make the selection in the select tag itself (like <select name="options" option="2">), then this wouldn't be a problem. As it is, there are numerous ways to solve the problem, none of which are particularly satisfying.

I haven't looked at XForms much (though I like what I have read about it), so I'm not sure if it fixes this problem.