Django templates vs jinja2 templates #2786
Description
I'm working on some template modifications for my local instance of Hypha and I'm facing some pain points with the Django template engine, particularly related to whitespace. Django supports use of jinja2 to drive its templating, and I believe jinja2 is a more feature rich template solution than the one Django provides.
Would there be any openness to considering switching to jinja2 as the default templating system in Hypha?
For context: Apparently 8 years ago the Django team basically said they don't want to support their template system / want to move to something like jinja as the default.
An Example of a Limitation
It might be helpful to have the concrete example that inspired the question / idea. We want to send our emails as plain text rather than HTML (or, eventually, in addition to HTML). Unlike jinja, the Django templating engine has no support for managing whitespace in between control commands because it is designed explicitly around the HTML use case, rather than plain text.
For instance, we want:
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{% load activity_tags %}
{% if 1 == 1 %}
hello
{% endif %}
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to render
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hello
----------
but instead it renders
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hello
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We can get what we need from a user experience perspective using Django, but the template will be unwieldy:
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{% load activity_tags %}{% if 1 == 1 %}hello{% endif %}
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In jinja we could do:
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{%- load activity_tags -%}
{%- if 1 == 1 -%}
hello
{%- endif -%}
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