How to parse template languages in Ragel?

Question

I've been working on a parser for simple template language. I'm using Ragel.

The requirements are modest. I'm trying to find [[tags]] that can be embedded anywhere in the input string.

I'm trying to parse a simple template language, something that can have tags such as {{foo}} embedded within HTML. I tried several approaches to parse this but had to resort to using a Ragel scanner and use the inefficient approach of only matching a single character as a "catch all". I feel this is the wrong way to go about this. I'm essentially abusing the longest-match bias of the scanner to implement my default rule ( it can only be 1 char long, so it should always be the last resort ).

%%{

  machine parser;

  action start      { tokstart = p; }          
  action on_tag     { results << [:tag, data[tokstart..p]] }            
  action on_static  { results << [:static, data[p..p]] }            

  tag  = ('[[' lower+ ']]') >start @on_tag;

  main := |*
    tag;
    any      => on_static;
  *|;

}%%

( actions written in ruby, but should be easy to understand ).

How would you go about writing a parser for such a simple language? Is Ragel maybe not the right tool? It seems you have to fight Ragel tooth and nails if the syntax is unpredictable such as this.