response filtering, routing strategies (maintaining state with page.js, crossroads.js)

[jogaman]

Hi there,
Been using unpoly for a while, and it's truly fantastic (coming from vue.js). But unpoly is a tad too high level for me. I'm looking to be a bit more in control what loads where.

1. The thing I appreciate the most with unpoly is that, in many cases, I don't need to do special version of a response page. Unpoly removes the html and header tags and only replaces what's necessary. The default is to replace the main tag (so everything around the main tag is discarded). I wonder, is it possible to do achieve something similar with htmx? Is this what the "useTemplateFragments" does in the config? From the look of it, it's working in a differnt manner https://htmx.org/essays/template-fragments/. I can't, while loading, select the tag to filter out from the response - instead I have to make special edits in the response template? But maybe I misunderstand how this works.
2. I think unpoly is meant mostly for apps, and app-like interfaces. There are "overlays" that are relative (you create a "new" overlay), but there is no absolute routing structure. I do miss a solid client side routing mechanism so I can reload a page and get the same state back with 3 overlays, for example. Htmx also seem to not have any routing. A decade ago I built a site using https://github.com/millermedeiros/crossroads.js but also using htmx-esque server side fragments loading. It worked okay, but perhaps this approach is worth reviving now that htmx has made client side loading better. Looking around I now see page.js, that might be a better choice today. Anyone has thoughts on how this would work, or how to achieve this? How would htmx and page.js work together? It might be a bit awkward with both server side routing and client side routing side by side, but I would really love to not have to rely on the SPA paradigm anymore.

[jogaman]

For 1 the answer seems to be hx-select, but I'm still curious about thoughts on how to keep state between page reloads.