Allowing emptyText to be a function is useful if you are dealing with searching/filtering and want to display a different "message" when no results are returned. I want to be able to display different messaging based on whether a user has no items in a particular collection versus finding no results when filtering or searching within a collection.

I think adding javascript _.result(this, 'emptyText') on line 67 in body.js would solve this problem and allow the logic to be executed whenever the empty row is shown.

As example function for emptyText may look like this:

emptyText : function(){
    return this.collection.isSearching() ? 'No results found.' : 'You have no records'; 
}

For more context, I've extended Backbone.Pageable to implement searching and filtering in client/server/infinite modes, so figured I would recommend this enhancement for others that might be in the same boat.