RE: Template System

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http://forums.oscommerce.com/viewtopic.php?p=205585#205585
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The template stucture needs to be in place before any engine can be used, I have looked at Smarty, and quite honestly, most of the osc project will need to be re-written to conform to the Smarty System..Good luck....and keep us informed on your progress....

As well, if you wish to use smarty and any contribution, they will all need to be re-written...I do not think that the team is looking to have all of that work discarded for any future releases.  Currently most contributions are easy to maintain over milestones...

[quote]Most browsers go nuts when they see a php begin tag and there is no way to predict how that is going to work.[/quote]

This is not true.  Browsers do not see any of the PHP code unless there is a bug in it.  PHP is a [b]server side scripting language[/b].  This means that the server parses it, and not the browser, apposed to what java is a client side language (the browser does the work).  

I have looked over Smarty and I do not see any major improvement or reason to go with smarty.  The template stucture I have implemented in my system will do exactly what youy want, you just need to follow a few simple rules, which I am sure any designer can follow with ease.  

I spent a day going over the structure with a client and he is a designer....now he breases through  making up new layouts for osc.   If your designers are worth their salt, then I am sure they too will be able to do this as well.

OSC with smarty will be a fork for sure.  So you might be better servered to start this project at source forge and get others who are willing to implement smarty into osc.  From comments made by the team, I do not believe you will ever see smarty set up into osc.  


[quote]Whether you tell designer not to touch anything in between { and } or <?php and ?> makes little difference in my view. But remember with smarty you have to teach you developer to learn smarty aswell as your designer.[/quote]

Exactly.  If all of your other systems are using Smarty, then you have a good reason to implement it, if not, I do not really see you point in doing so.

cheers,