I would not want to discorage variable in filters, but to do it will need a lot of wisdom, and user testing. So keep working folks.
However: I think we are often trying to drive functionality into filters when is is simpler and easier to use nested structures be they list widgets or let widgets. At the very least we should support the ease of use outside filters before we then try and drive it into filters.
- If we look at the functional and structural advantaged of the if/else/endif statements we can see how the syntax can provide a much easier way to represent real world algorithiums. Both nesting conditions and automatic responses to the opposite the
elsecondition.
Personaly I think we could introduce another structure designed to assist the designer with multi-variable problems. Perhaps a while/wend and similar structures?
There may already be opportunities with functions, custom widgets and Genesis widget. I have a strong feeling with all these advances of recent years that we HAVE NOT yet explored the possibility space these gave us. Plenty of answers already exist within these tools, and it we can find some hard limitations it is those we need to address, not follow to many other divergent paths.
My views here are based on a carrer of communicating/translating training and teaching ICT, I always want to frame that as how hard would it be for a naive readers to understand, or myself after months of not using something.