JSTL: JSP Standard Tag Library Kick Start By Jeff Heaton
Table of Contents
Introduction
There are several advantages to this tight integration of display and programming tags. First, JSTL is designed so that the Web programmer should be able to learn JSTL quickly and efficiently. JSTL is not just easier for humans to read and understand than JSP scriptlet programming; it is also easier for Web page layout programs to understand. Future Web layout programs will be able to recognize the JSTL tags and insert HTML formatting without disruption of the JSTL tags. Further, Web authoring tools will be able to interact with JSTL tags and perform basic programming.
One perfect example of how JSTL interaction with Web authoring tools can be of particular benefit is in the area of international programming. Traditionally, a multilingual Web application has stored individual text strings in a central location a database or a data file. The problem is that the method used to display these international text strings is not standardized from one application to the next. Most Web applications use some sort of JSP scriptlet programming to retrieve and then display multilingual text. Unfortunately, Web authoring tools are completely oblivious to these different methods of international programming. JSTL provides us with a concise way to implement a multilingual application. Now it's possible to design Web authoring tools that are aware of the multilingual JSP tags and allows the native language of the page to be displayed just as easily as the foreign languages that the page will be translated into. This enables programmers designing multilingual Web sites to visually edit their Web pages in a variety of languages.