The introduced template is sufficient when we're talking about lists or combo boxes. But the problem appears when we work with the tree, ideally I'd like to work like this:

        <treechildren>
          <template value="@bind(vm.someList)" var="listItem">
            <treeitem label="@bind(listItem.firstLevelTitle)">
              <treechildren>
                <template value="@bind(listItem.childList)" var="childItem">
                  <listitem label="@bind(childItem.secondLevelLabel"/>
                </template>
              </treechildren>
            </treeitem>
        </treechildren>

This essentially allows several important things to do:

• Controlling the tree in ZUL instead of creating a TreeModel in Java
• It can be used in any structure - templating here means the iteration only, it doesn't dictate what model of what component should be used. So essentially a ListModel can be used for the tree as well.
• I could control how sub-nodes and leaves look like on ZUL page, what context menu they have, what picture and what buttons can be placed there.

But I can't do anything like that at the moment, I can build and control things only in Java which is very tedious.
This task though touches both - working with the tree and the problem of template in general.