[UPHPU] Template engines

[Velda Christensen]

> So Velda, what do you prefer to use as the bridge to left-brained guys
> like myself?  Does a Smarty template work well for you as a bridge?
> Is there anything else you prefer?
>
> -- Walt

Smarty works great for me.  Granted you will of course run into 
designers who won't use anything that doesn't have a wysiwyg, in which 
case you or someone like you will be doing the coding for them, but at 
least with smarty I can enable the pop-up debugging console and easily 
edit templates that way.  I like the smarty-based systems where I can 
edit files online (and revert to the last save if I have to).  I save my 
changes, refresh my other tab, and I can see exactly what I just did.

Bottom line (and of course still putting engineering aside):
- If you're going to do all the design-related coding FOR the designer, 
don't worry about templates.
- If you're working WITH the designer to script, I'd say it's up to how 
you and your designer work together.  The bigger / more random the group 
or the more.. polar shall we say.. the designer and programmer are, the 
better chance you ought to keep them separated.
- If a designer is going to need to work extensively on their own (as in 
the case with a cart or cms) by all means, please use smarty or 
something like it.

I, and a good number the designers I work with, are in the second or 
third scenario. I don't know how we'd get by without some sort of 
template system ;-)

I have seen systems where the person actually imports some pages into 
their favorite WYSIWG, edits them, saves the resulting html, loads it 
back into the system, and the system automatically generates templates 
based on on the html.  Alot of designers dig that too but it's probably 
too big a pain in the .. neck .. for most applications.  So to me, 
smarty still takes the cake.

Hoping that helps.

-Velda