what is free marker and how it is used?

AI generated answer (using internal Slack threads):

FreeMarker is a Java-based template engine, also known as a scripting language, that is used to generate text output based on templates and changing data. NetSuite uses FreeMarker for generating PDFs and emails. It works by transforming a record into an HTML-like XML document, which is then transformed into a PDF by the Big Faceless Organization (BFO) engine. In the context of NetSuite, FreeMarker is used to manipulate and format data from records. For example,

${record.trandate}

is a FreeMarker expression that retrieves the transaction date from a record. FreeMarker also provides built-in functions to handle and manipulate strings, including special characters in XML. For example, if you have a string that needs to be converted to include HTML entities, you can use FreeMarker's built-in string functions. More information about these functions can be found in the FreeMarker documentation: https://freemarker.apache.org/docs/ref_builtins_string.html#ref_builtin_html ****** Disclaimer: This response was generated by an artificial intelligence assistant based on previous conversations from multiple Slack channels, and may contain inaccuracies or mistakes. ******