That's just not what we're trying to do with Django's template language.

However, if you'd like a template language that's closer to pure Python, I'd suggest giving Cheetah (http://cheetahtemplate.org/) a try. I've used it in the past; quite nice.

also check out Jinja2 (http://jinja.pocoo.org/2/)

It is now trivially easy to plug in whatever template language you like, and still have all the usual Django shortcuts work with it:

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/api/#usin...