Comment 1:

Labels changed: added priority-later, removed priority-triage.

Owner changed to builder@golang.org.

Status changed to Thinking.

Comment 2:

Some inspiration:
https://developers.google.com/closure/templates/docs/concepts#linejoining
It is based on some simple conventions, something very Go-ish imo.

Comment 3:

Just some brainstorm. Still taking the idea from Closure Templates, simplifying it a bit:
- Parsing process must accept a configuration/flag to turn on compact mode. Off by
default, so nothing that exists change. I'm not sure where this flag is set.
- When the flag is on, lines are joined using same Closure heuristics: "if the join
location borders a template or HTML tag on either side, the lines are joined with no
space. If the join location does not border a template or HTML tag on either side, the
lines are joined with exactly one space".
- A special action {{sp}} inserts an space for two lines that would otherwise be joined
without any space.
- No need for the {{nil}} tag used in Closure; simply merge lines with the desired
spaces if that is needed.
Inline JavaScript may require some more thoughts.

Comment 4:

Labels changed: added go1.1maybe.

Comment 5:

A special flag for indented output would also be useful.
In either case, special care must be given to 
. Worse yet is that any tag may be 
css-styled as preformatted text. a single newline should of course never be replaced by
a single space, unless you want to save an extra bit in compression.
As long a you're parsing html, a {{pre}} template tag could cause all text inside the
immediate parent tag to maintain its content precisely. Multiple instances of {{pre}} in
the same html subtree would be idempotent.

Comment 6:

Labels changed: removed go1.1maybe.

Comment 7:

Labels changed: added go1.2maybe.

Comment 8:

Labels changed: added feature.

Comment 9:

Labels changed: added go1.3maybe, removed go1.2maybe.

Comment 10:

Labels changed: removed go1.3maybe.

Comment 11:

Labels changed: added go1.3maybe.

Comment 12:

Labels changed: removed feature.

Comment 13:

Labels changed: added release-none, removed go1.3maybe.

Comment 14:

Labels changed: added repo-main.

This is a dupe of #20879; I'm going to go ahead and close.

Probably worth revisiting when the stdlib can be versioned, but until then, the conclusion on that bug seems right to me.