A good suggestion: It's declarative and not hidden somewhere in the code. And as Jim says, it also doesn't bother the template designers.
The @varname;noquote@ was probably conceived for two reasons:
- It provided for a relatively easy migration.
- It was implemented under deadline pressure.
(IIRC Peter was working on the project that originally "noquoted" ACS - maybe he knows more)
There's a few more rather nasty things with the current noquote patch e.g.:
- you need to noquote every variable (with html code) that you pass on to an included adp
- you need to noquote a property you pass on to a master template
However I don't have an idea yet how a more radical change would work in real life. Noquoting a system with a more proper approach would take a lot of time and most certainly lead to two different codebases that are hard to bring together.
If we do it step by step - live with a solution that works but will be phased out eventually - then I think it is workable.
Also some templating system guru has to be found to implement the code for the proper solution. I'm not really savvy about the templating system itself, but I'd be happy to give some directions.