Using Jasper for template processing?

[Jaroslav Gergic <j_...@yahoo.com>]

NOTE: I posted the message below to the tomcat-user mailing list
several days ago, but without any meningful response.

I am NOT tomcat-dev mailing list member, so respond
directly to my email address, please.

Thanks for any help and suggestions,
in case I will succeed in my task, 
I can contribute back to the community of course...
***********************************************************************
Hello Tomcat developers and advanced users!

I have following question:

I would like to use Jasper engine for template processing.  I use
Tomcat with JSPs and its good, but I would like to alter Jasper usage
this way:

An JSP page is compiled into a Java source where the user's JSP
page extends the class HttpJspBase and overrides several methods
notably _jspService().

I want to use Jasper for more generic task. Template processing
independent on Servlets and HTTP. Imagine following interface:

public interface Template {
  void renderTemplate(Writer out) throws java.io.IOException;
}

I want to alter Jasper to process files with JSP-like syntax (of
course with other intrinsic variables accessible inside the
renderTemplate() method) and generate Java source code implementing
the Template interface and than compile the source code using Java
compiler into executable classes. Then load and run generated classes
as they have been written manually.

So I ask:
1) is it possible or is Jasper tightly coupled with HTTP and Servlet
API?
2) if it is possible, how to do that? (which classes can be re-used,
which interfaces and classes have to be re-implemented
3) how much time it can take (1 day, 3 days, a week, two weeks, ...)

Thanks for any comments and suggestions.

Jaroslav Gergic

=====
Jaroslav Gergic (Gergi)
mailto:j_gergic@yahoo.com
http://nenya.ms.mff.cuni.cz/~gergic/

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