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

On Jun 9, 2004, at 5:36 PM, Lukas Smoith wrote:

Paul M Jones wrote:

I want to play nice, I really do; I hope my concession and negotiation messages have advertised that fact. A unified template system will help not only me but everyone else in PEAR and PHP land -- but Savant has got to be in PEAR for it to start working unification magic. I hope there are enough positive votes in the end to outweigh the negative. Every positive vote helps. :-)

The problem is that you don't seem to consider the implications of this. You are trying to get Savant in so that it has the same priorities as existing packages. Yes PEAR cares about BC and it also cares not to confuse its users.

Lukas, I am not sure but I really don't get this point. There are 5 template engine in PEAR (HTML_Template_Flexy, HTML_Template_IT, HTML_Template_PHPLIB HTML_Template_Sigma , HTML_Template_Xipe ). 2 of these are practically zombies (Xipe/PHPLIB). These are all template engines yet Savant is not really an engine: It doesn't parse, doesn't cache doesn't use a proprietary markup. You have been kind enough to explain several time that this situation occurred under the previous rules, and this is very clear to me. That said, I don't think that a PHP developer (even a beginner) can't read the difference between a lightweight non-caching non-compiling OO template system vs a template engine. I recall that at the Amsterdam conference you confirmed that PEAR doesn't accept redundant packages but does accept packages that have a different approach to the same solution. This is what Savant does, provides a different approach to the templates issue.

What you are trying to do is ensure that Savant gets the same level of "protection". In reality you are making this unified template thing even more complicated.

In my humble opinion this unification deal is a bit of a utopia. Templates are different. There are several approaches and if there is an area where "one size fits all" doesn't apply templates are one. Anyway there are two issues a) are the developers willing to unite on this unification ? I doubt. b) would the users really benefit from a unified template system ?

You are making the situation for users even more confusing. You are putting even more code in a section we all agree should much rather be cleaned up. You do this in a polite manner, while you choose to ignore what experienced people tell you (for months!). I don't think that users will be confused. I for one know that I would want something like Savant and not something else. That's me. Another developer might want something like

Flexy, IT, Sigma, Smarty or will build his own. The user can simply read the description carefully download, try, and decide. PEAR it's about quality code. I learned this lesson from you too and I am thankful for that. Savant is quality code, is different then existing packages. It is, we can look at it from several angles yet to date what I saw is just a demonstration that Savant (lightweight non compiling/caching mode) could be embedded on Flexy. This doesn't surprise me. I bet Flexy functionality can be embedded into something else e.g. Sigma. In fact if Flexy " started it's life as a simplification of HTML_Template_Xipe" he could have joined Xipe (nor almost orphaned) at that time but he didn't. This might be confusing to users, have on the public site both Xipe and Flexy but having something different wouldn't be that confusing.

Sorry I have a hard time to see where you are looking out for PEAR. You are trying to squeeze your stuff in (I am not saying that there is a need for the basic feature set you proposed). I guess this is a valid approach but don't label this cooperation. I had an hard time too because I was using Savant and I didn't know it would be proposed to PEAR. But it was a pleasant surprise. If PEAR it's about different (no duplicates)

and well coded packages, this might really fit well.

Anyways, Savant seems to becoming a reality in PEAR as unfortunately allot of people choose the quick fix over a better long term solution. Especially as Savant is so easy to install I don't understand why they are doing this.

The only concrete offer was to embed into Flexy. That would have been a mistake because Flexy users don't need Savant and at the same time Savant user don't need Flexy. Long term I don't think that Savant can cause any harm to PEAR. On the contrary. Regards David Costa

So it goes. regards, Lukas -- PEAR Development Mailing List (http://pear.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php