Play nice! Re: Savant/Flexy/Foo template engines

Here's the deal. The is *overwhelming* demand for Savant in PEAR, me included. I see this as an opportunity to provide a common template interface to some existing template engines. Alan has demonstrated that it would require very little modification to Flexy to make it extend a Savant-like template engine with his recent CVS commits. Why don't we stop arguing about whether Savant will be in PEAR, and instead argue about how it will be in PEAR. Clearly, there is a significant need for a minimalist template engine, and Savant is that. In order to allow users to comfortably switch to a different engine if their requirements change would be a good thing for Savant, and a good thing for PEAR and by consequence, for PHP. Scenario: I start using Savant as the template engine frontend for my website example.com. The site becomes popular, and users have lots of content to offer, so I would like to make it possible for them to code some pages. I can't offer them full access, and so the security risk of allowing access to PHP tags through Savant templates is unacceptable. Instead, I load the handy Flexy extension (or the handy patTemplate, or the handy IT, or whatever extension is available), and allow my users to write templates in Flexy, with specific security limitations built-in. The templates are compiled, and then displayed using Savant just as any other template would be. I hope this example shows why it is so critical that we look past any small differences over the way things are now - this is a genuine opportunity to expand the range of templating in PHP. Let's make Savant a base, and with the collaboration of several developers who know what they're doing (Paul, Alan, and if other template maintainers jump on board, that's great), build extensions that will support the things that users of existing template engines have come to expect. In addition, it's very clear from recent messages that Paul and Alan can work out a base that differs slightly from existing Savant, and slightly from Alan's port of Savant into Flexy that combines the strengths of both. I'm willing to help as long as I don't get in the way, not being the templating expert that these folks are. Greg