[development] why not just phptemplate in core?

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Neil Drumm wrote:
> Tobias Maier wrote:
> 
>> I think it may confuse people that we ship a theme where the code is
>> not similar compared with all other core themes.
> 
> Plain PHP themes are useful. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not see
> a way for a PHP template theme to control what features it offers or
> which block regions are present. As far as I know the only way to
> control these is in a plain PHP theme.
> 
> Standardizing on one templating system is okay, and I think PHP template
> is an excellent choice. But I am not sure that it is ready and I do not
> want to leave the extra layer of API in place if we do standardize on
> one templating system.
> 
> I do think plain PHP themes are here to stay, so lets keep a
> well-maintained example in core.

I second these points. Nothing beats the plain PHP themes in feature
set. There used to be different themes in core. There are even only
style sheet based themes (named styles), which are not plain PHP nor
PHPTemplate. Drupal core should show off the versatile possibilities of
the themeing system, and should not give the impression that Drupal is a
"one templating system only CMS". Drupal can do more.

Goba