It can be argued that constricting HTML using string manipulation is the right way, because HTML is defined in terms of strings.
Alternatively, HTML standart leaves generation as an exercise to the reader.
I am not making a point about "HTML uses strings", but calling out the lack of separation between encoding and logical structure in the standart. Just for example, and sorry for mentioning it, but ASN.1 with its encoding rules provides terminology and a way to talk about encoding and semantics, so library writers do not have to reinvent it. Or, say, you want to generate some C++ code — what options except string templates do you even have? Standart does not help you to understand how to represent and encode senantics of a c++ source.
