The best way to represent HTML is with HTML itself, not an HTML-like system that varies in subtle ways between languages and libraries that happens to be missing the one feature you need.
I'm a large fan of Embedded DSLs (Domain-Specific Languages) for these types of problems, as they allow using normal HTML syntax directly in the rest of your code. Combined with macros (for compile-time parsing/analysis) and interpolation (for safely templating values), DSLs can be safer, more performant, and overall more maintainable than other approaches. For languages like HTML and SQL that are standard and well-defined, this is undoubtedly a better approach in my mind.
I've been developing my own approach to Embedded DSLs as my thesis research with my own programming language Rhovas [0], which addresses concerns with syntax restrictions (e.g. string quotes), semantic analysis (AST/IR transformations), and most importantly tooling. Happy to answer any questions about work in this area.
I'm a large fan of Embedded DSLs (Domain-Specific Languages) for these types of problems, as they allow using normal HTML syntax directly in the rest of your code. Combined with macros (for compile-time parsing/analysis) and interpolation (for safely templating values), DSLs can be safer, more performant, and overall more maintainable than other approaches. For languages like HTML and SQL that are standard and well-defined, this is undoubtedly a better approach in my mind.
I've been developing my own approach to Embedded DSLs as my thesis research with my own programming language Rhovas [0], which addresses concerns with syntax restrictions (e.g. string quotes), semantic analysis (AST/IR transformations), and most importantly tooling. Happy to answer any questions about work in this area.
[0]: https://blog.willbanders.dev/articles/introducing-syntax-mac...