I'm thinking of integrating caption templates in the core of jAlbum so they become uniform. Apart from supporting the standard <ja:> tags and ${expressionLanguage} syntax, I think this form would be convenient:

[Camera lens:|meta.cameraLens]

That form would include the part before the pipe character if, and only if the stuff on the right hand side of the pipe is non-empty. What do you think?

My skins already use the ${meta.varName} syntax. Not the label, though, as it's usually more complex (HTML-fomatted), not a single string.

I think this would be a step in the wrong direction. The question you need to ask yourself is whether jAlbum is an app for the techie tinkerer, or for the more typical user?

As soon as you start telling users that, to get the result they want, they have to learn a bunch of obscure variable names, learn a scripting language that no one outside of jAlbum World has ever seen, and manually enter a bunch of stuff in a template, I think you've lost half of them. Even if they don't actually have to use the capabilities, and that they're optional, you've still scared them off.

"Oh, but it's all very simple! First there are these HTML tags. Surely these are all familiar to you already. Now there's a simple scripting language. But make sure your nested <ja:if> and <ja:else> tags all match up, or the album build will crash. And oh, BTW, the syntax for <ja:if test="${someVar}"> and <ja:if exists="someVar"> are different, so don't mix them up! Want to apply some font formatting to the string? Just plug in the right HTML/CSS tags. You know how to do that, right? But don't generate invalid HTML, or the entire page might fail to load."

Most users want checkboxes and comboboxes. They don't want to have to do any "coding."

A quick example, produced with Neptune. Look at the slide captions. Not a single scrap of manually-entered settings. No manually-entered variable names. All done with simple point-and-click, including the formatting of the metadata (weight, italics, font size). It even takes care of prettying up the f-stop display with the correct strange character.

https://jefftucker.jalbum.net/captionsNeptune/

I tried to do something similar with Tiger, and even I had to struggle with this!

https://jefftucker.jalbum.net/captionsTiger/

I had to look up variable names, carefully enter the caption template material, and so on.

Sure, the Tiger caption templates are ultimately more flexible, and that's fine for users like our friend MarkusD. But for ordinary users, this is the kiss of death.

BTW, here are a couple of screenshots I posted as part of a feature request I made years ago. Just as relevant today, I think. One shows what the default panel might look like, and the other shows what it might look like after the user has filled in his own stuff. The rule is simple, of course: "Use the first one that's non-empty."

I hear you, just thought that the proposed syntax (inspired by this forum software's link syntax) would help most users get rid of need for ja:if and ja:else constructs. It may be a challenge to get the variable names right though, which your (Jeff's) UI takes care of