binarycloud: Tight Integration with Smarty

Hi all, I've cc:d the smarty-dev list in case they have any thoughts on this subject. As some of you may (or may not) know, I'm doing a large project with Jason that uses binarycloud. We have discovered many things in the couple days we've been using it under a deadline: some bad, many VERY good. I am a happy man. This whole long process _has_ been worth it and we're coming up on releasing an amazing system. I have also come to the realization that Smarty is ridiculously fantastic. We should not ignore this. In fact, we should take advantage of it and exploit Smarty for everything we can get it to do for us. I think smarty should be the only PHP template engine used by binarycloud. (btw, that new smarty debug console looks fantastic). I think it would confusing as hell to have different template engines if we want to have a large library of standard apps based on binarycloud. So, I propose that we merge what little code we have for configuring Smarty into Node, along with jason's convenient bc-constants-always-available addition to Template, ditch template, and create a new XSL class which just renders XSL. --------- Also, I think we _should_ maintain some bits of abstraction that we have currently in node (like SetTplVar, etc) because we need the opportunity to do things like add stuff to the smarty arrays that's binarycloud specific, etc. (though this could arguable done in a bc/smarty init method somewhere in node) Jason and I have already taken this track with the project we're working on, and I have I think convinced him to be willing to rely on smarty for a _lot_ more than we were both thinking at the beginning. Apps, while great, should only be built if you need real logic - and switching a navigation menu (etc) based on what section you're in is not my idea of "real logic" - it can be done elegantly in the template, so it should be done there. ./rant :) _alex -- alex black, project leader binarycloud: http://www.binarycloud.com