[development] theme_foo() functions vs tpl.php templates (was Move all core modules into their own directories)

[Earl Miles]

Neil Drumm wrote:
> 
> I'm using a PHP theme because there are some ways PHPTemplate simply 
> doesn't work:
> 
> - I want to decide my block regions, not have PHPTemplate tell me which 
> ones I implement. (Or better yet, I just want to put regions in my 
> template and have something else figure out what they are.)

function delocalized_regions() { return array(...stuff...); }; // Done.

> - I want to decide my theme features, not have PHPTemplate tell me which 
> ones I implement. (Or, better yet, I just don't want to have to worry 
> about them.)

Not sure about this one. It may be a weakness of the current engine system, or 
there may be a way to do it that I don't know yet.

> - I can just copy themeable functions into my theme and go.

I do that in my template.php all the time.

> But all these (especially the last) will have to be fixed if PHPTemplate 
> is the default.
> 
> As for multiple themeing systems being a strength, I would really like 
> to see hard statistics showing just how often PHPTemplate is used. If it 
> is really high, I'd take the ability to do things that would otherwise 
> break the engine layer and have the simplification of not having an 
> engine layer over a check mark on the feature list.

Well, it's used every time someone installs 4.7 ...