Re: [PEPr] +1 for HTML::Template_Savant

On Jun 9, 2004, at 2:14 PM, Alan Knowles wrote:

- Savant has a totally different approach then XIPE,Flexy and any other template engine available on PEAR. It is lightweight not compiling, non caching and it is exremely easy to extend it using filters. There are different ways to look at it but if you try both (as I did) the other existing template engines you will see the difference from a developer standpoint.

I think you overestimate the difference, the patch to support Savant in Flexy was < 30 lines, and Flexy is still 30% smaller that Savant..

I don't. I tried both and there is a somehow substantial difference. For one Flexy doesn't have plugins just as an example (http://www.phpsavant.com/index.php?page=SavantPlugins) or filters. furthermore you define Flexy as "one of the first template engine to use a real Lexer, rather than regex'es, making it possible to do things like ASP.net or Cold Fusion tags. " and "uses compiled templates" Savant "Savant is a powerful but lightweight PEAR-compliant template system for PHP. It is non-compiling, and uses PHP itself as its template languages" Flexy = uses a Lexer, compiled template engine Savant = not compiling, not caching template system These are objective differences.

Even if there is a subtle line on defining redundant packages, Savant didn't cross it.

This is one of the reasons I voted against - it does cross the line, and is extremely redundant.. - the wrapper around Flexy to do pretty much the same API is 60 lines of code..

Eventually I would be strongly against any integration with Flexy. I wouldn't use Savant as a sub method of another package. It's different and very lightweight.

I'm not sure how you classify lightweight when it is 30% bigger.

because of it's non compiling and non caching system vs a full compiling/caching engine.

So it looks like Savant is at +8 (1 conditional) / -3 for a +5 (1 conditional) ... and Alan's -1 vote in that bunch makes me think he does not want to collaborate on a unified template engine (Alan, please correct me if I'm wrong there).

I do believe a unified engine is the way to go, unfortunatly, Savant already has a number of serious design issues, = Poorly designed Loader / API for plugins. = Not a very generic API That's of course your opinion but allow me to say from a user standpoint I tried all the PEAR templates, smarty and Savant. To me there is a substantial and objective

difference to justify the proposal.

I'm not saying Flexy's API is perfect, however, it already supports Savant, Flexy, and Xipe like backends. and would probably be a better starting point for a unified engine. (as mentioned previously - based around the previously proposed unified API)

Then I don't see why as "HTML_Template_Flexy started it's life as a simplification of HTML_Template_Xipe" there wasn't a merge at that time. Perhaps we should call for votes the removal from the directory of Xipe. Regards David Costa

Regards Alan -- Can you help out? Need Consulting Services or Know of a Job? http://www.akbkhome.com