Spring MVC example without Thymeleaf

I've read the official Spring Form Submission doc: http://ift.tt/1BySfFd and I was wondering if they have another version that does not use Thymeleaf. And why are they using Thymeleaf? Wouldn't new users be put off having to tackle additional techs (I know I am)?

Anyway just a good, working example of form submission without Thymeleaf would be awesome as I'm having trouble properly binding back end classes to my jsp. Can anyone point to good examples that clearly demonstrate how the binding works?

Thanks,

Tim