We've used the Template Toolkit to our satisfaction in earlier jobs, so when I went looking for a framework, I wanted one that was based on or could use Template.

I found OpenInteract, but now I regret I did.

Apologies in advance to the author, but here's my list of reasons not to like OI:

OpenInteract is an impressive body of code and I can see how it works for its author. However, I think it suffers from being (mostly?) a one-man show.

So what would my ideal framework look like?

I'd like to try and duplicate the Struts framework from the Java world. Where J2EE just makes me wonder whether I actually need all that complexity, Struts immediately struck a chord. It solves dillemma's that I have had myself, building web apps since 1995.

In short, Struts is Model-View-Controller for the web, with emphasis on really identifying the Controller (and not mixing it with the View).

So I started wondering, maybe I should switch to Java for this kind of application...

But then I took one look at one random class (in this case the implementation of a custom jsp tag which creates a hyperlink) and I saw two screens of code, where two lines of perl would suffice.

So, I think there's merit in the idea of Struts-for-Perl. What do others think?