[djtriptych]

1. Angular directives CAN but are not required to conform to valid HTML. All directives can be declared in HTML via a data-ng-xxx attribute if your app needs to maintain valid HTML.

2. All templates are tied to a compiler - there's really no getting around that. I'd have to disagree that that format is imcomprehensible to non technical designers, especially when compared to purely JS options.

That said, it's perfectly reasonable to rewrite that template as follows (which should play more nicely with existing tools):

    <pane title="Localization"
        data-pane-date="2012-04-01"
        data-pane-date-format="fullDate"
        data-pane-currency="123456"
        data-pane-number="98765.4321" />