[development] .tpl-ifying Drupal

[Larry Garfield]

My understanding (and merlin will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong) is that 
while theme engines have been there for a while no one actually used one 
besides PHPTemplate.  Smarty and PHPTal were used as tag libraries on top of 
PHPTemplate.  So what's happened is that the engine portion of PHPTemplate 
has been absorbed into core (with various refactoring to make it faster, 
better, stronger).  I believe swappable tag libraries (named engines, 
technically wrongly at this point) are still possible if the maintainers of 
those engines choose to upgrade.

(As an aside, I really think Smarty is overkill if it's just used as a tag 
library.  Smarty's big benefit would be in pull-based templates, whereas 
Drupal, like most web apps, uses push-based templates.  I now step down from 
the soap box.)

On Thursday 03 May 2007, Robin Monks wrote:
> Hey,
>
>   From someone who hasn't really been following the changes, but who really
> hates PHPTemplate (which is designed more toward developers, rather than
> graphics artists and end users IMHO) and would much rather use Smarty...
> Will Smarty still be available as an option in 6?  AKA. Will theme engines
> support still be there?
>
> Robin
>
> On 5/3/07, Earl Miles <merlin at logrus.com> wrote:
> > Now that the new theming system is basically in (I have one outstanding
> > patch
> > and 2 more in the hopper that are not yet at patch level, but they
> > shouldn't
> > affect this), we now need a coordinated effort to properly .tpl-ify the
> > majority of Drupal's theming functions.
> >
> > At the same time, I think we should also be looking at what isn't
> > themable enough in Drupal and try to correct that at the same time. And
> > this is a good
> > place to try and correct Drupal's HTML/XHTML code to conform to the
> > proper standards.
> >
> > The Themer Pack project was started as a gateway to this, and it hasn't
> > been
> > entirely successful (though I give HUGE HUGE HUGE kudos to dvessel who
> > did a
> > LOT of work on the themerpack, and calebg who started to but got busy).


-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, 
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to 
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession 
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."  -- Thomas 
Jefferson