Why? If you must embed logic elements in a View, why not use the constructs that were explicitly defined for the JSF platform?
ui:repeat is not a JSF2 feature, BTW. It's a Facelets tag, and I've been using Facelets since JSF Version 1.1.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.
The only thing that kept the leeches off of me was this tiny ad:
a bit of art, as a gift, that will fit in a stocking