[UPHPU] Pastebin.org, Would Anybody like to help me create a pastebin?

[John David Anderson]

On Aug 6, 2007, at 1:35 PM, Velda Christensen wrote:

> Scott Hill wrote:
>>  I have
>> never been able to justify the overhead of a template engine in  
>> what I've
>> done so far.
>>
>> My humble $.0s.
>
> I can see skipping a separate template system if you work alone or  
> with a close knit team.  Not everyone has that luxury though.
>
> As a designer, I prefer using smarty or a template system like it,  
> even if it's a reinvented wheel, because of an experience I had  
> with a bit of a neurotic programmer who frequently made me his  
> scapegoat. Most programming errors, he made it clear, could have  
> been easily avoided by not giving a skirt access to the code, even  
> if she was just logging in to add css classes.  Since I was  
> responsible for presentation and usability, had we used a separate  
> template system, I'd still be there, and they wouldn't be calling  
> me every year or so asking what it'd take to bring me back.

This sounds to me a like an access control issue, not a templating  
system issue. If you're using your template system to manage who-can- 
change what, I think there's a more fundamental issue at work. Were  
you using a code-versioning system? Were you all working on the same  
copy of the code?

> I know that's one bad situation and there should be dozens of  
> better situations to make up for it. But the fact of the matter is,  
> you can't always choose your designers, and you just may be able to  
> avoid a little frustration for both parties by drawing a big line  
> between back end and design.   That line gets a bit fuzzy if your  
> logic and presentation are done in the same code.

Smarty is not the only way to separate business logic from the  
presentation layer. Again, I don't think that template systems are  
even feasible as security measures. If you don't trust your designer,  
then why are you working with them? I also don't see how Smarty  
enforces the security you're even after.

> Plus, as a web host, it's nice to be able to tell people they can  
> edit the templates on their shopping cart systems without having to  
> be afraid they'll mess up the php.

You can't have parse errors with Smarty?

> It's nice also to be able to tell them they should be able to apply  
> patches without having to worry about messing up their design  
> work.  And it's alot easier to tell them those things if the system  
> they're using is built with smarty.

Such a setup is easy to create using plain 'ol (well architected) PHP.

-- John