> Why use ZJS instead of HTMX?

Because it does one thing and one thing only: instantiate an HTML element object. You literally cannot write a book about zjs-component the way it was done for HTMX: you'd be done on page one after demonstrating how zjs-component works!

To me there is value in lowering the cognitive burden this significantly; while HTMX is indeed a lower burden than almost everything else, zjs-component is even lower and gets you 80% (or more) of the way there.

You may disagree that the trade-off is worth it, but in many contexts the trade-off is certainly worth it.

In any case, with the way I use zjs-component, all I use are static files for the fragments (fragments are not generated by the server).

When I used HTMX the fragments returned in response to a request were almost never static files, they were all generated on the server (in Go, if you must know) so values could be interpolated. This, by its very nature, is not reusable.

When I create a component that is a zjs-component, the calls it makes to hydrate itself gets data in the responses (JSON, or similar), not HTML. It means that I write an object that has a snippet of HTML, has Javascript that is scoped to that object, and has DOM calls that can be scoped to that specific instance of the object.

HTMX has no scoping or containment of of the code in the HTML, nor can code in a fragment be written to only nagivate/search the DOM in that specific instance because HTMX does not have instances of objects.

The whole reason I use zjs-component over something like HTMX is because zjs-component has the concept of "Objects" (containing HTML and methods), "Instances" which are isolated from each other and a way to instantiate these objects in a page using nothing more than `<zjs-component remote-src='some/remote/path/SomeObject.zjsc'>`.

It is clear to me that having an object containing HTML and methods, with instances isolated from each other, is not of value to you. Even though you do not find value in the trade-off it offers, you must understand that HTMX is not a replacement for zjs-component, and zjs-component is not a replacement for HTMX.

Some of what zjs-component offers cannot be done easily in HTMX (like having nothing but static files for defining objects, scoping DOM nav to the instance of the object that is running that method, etc), and some of what HTMX does cannot be done in zjs-component (such as interpolating values into a template) because it makes no sense to do so in the context of zjs-component.

Seeing as how neither is able to replace the other, why the fixation on HTMX as a replacement for zjs-component?