I think Mark has certain issues with smarty templating (due to speed, from what I can remember), but I've a feeling lack of time on his behalf is also a bit of an issue. There are certainly community members who would be quite pleased to see smarty implemented though, so I'm wondering if it'd be possible to run both side by side. In any case I'd say Mark was the main guy to talk to about this especially if you wanted it properly merging into the core package. Might be worth dropping him an email incase he doesnt get time to swing by here himself...

Thats a great idea.

I'd like to hear Marks comments on this, but if someone else is doing all the work and it doesn't impact on him much, I don't see a reason not to do this. After all, Vanilla is GPL licensed is it not?

This project was started long ago by Jazzman, so i would see what he was up to in making his own type of theming machine.

Other than the speed issues with this project, i would also worry about this becoming so popular that people are going to want it to be ported to the core like many other software packages have. I don't know about Mark, but this would be a great loss to Vanilla because it would slow it right down. My advice is that you would insert a single include() function for a replacement file in each of the theme file and then base the theming engine/files in a different directory. With that way used, you could use it as an extension that doesn't even touch the core of Vanilla, and all that the license would cover in the global vanilla theme that you would alter.

I'm totally open to this. I say do it and we'll see about getting it into subversion either as a branch or into the core.

As for keeping it in the core release, it all depends on how the integration is done. If the core functionality/extensibility isn't harmed or damaged, and the naming conventions are followed (consistency is key), I'm all for it.

This is good timing as I'll be releasing Vanilla 1.1 right away and they can feel free to get their hands dirty.

Still nothing? ;(

I think this would be great, since i'm having to chop up vanilla to fit certain templates of my own. Because of what you had mentioned.

wayne

With smarty that would be still a mixture of smarty syntax and HTML.

The php part should be more readable though.

Would it be better like that (e.g. people_apply_form_nopostback:<?php
// Note: This file is included from the library/People/People.Control.ApplyForm.php class.
$TermsOfServiceUrl = $this->Context->Configuration['WEB_ROOT'] . 'termsofservice.php';
?>
<div class="About">
<?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('AboutMembership'); ?>
<p><a href="<?php echo GetUrl($this->Context->Configuration, $this->Context->SelfUrl); ?>"><?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('BackToSignInForm'); ?></a></p>
</div>
<div id="Form" class="ApplyForm">
<fieldset>
<legend><?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('MembershipApplicationForm'); ?></legend>
<p><?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('AllFieldsRequired'); ?></p>

<?php
$this->CallDelegate('PreWarningsRender');
$this->Render_Warnings();
$this->Render_PostBackForm($this->FormName);
?>

<ul>
<?php $this->CallDelegate('PreInputsRender'); ?>
<li>
<label for="txtEmail"><?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('EmailAddress'); ?></label>
<input id="txtEmail" type="text" name="Email" value="<?php echo $this->Applicant->Email; ?>" class="Input" maxlength="160" />
</li>
<li>
<label for="txtUsername"><?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('Username'); ?></label>
<input id="txtUsername" type="text" name="Name" value="<?php echo $this->Applicant->Name; ?>" class="Input" maxlength="20" />
</li>
<li>
<label for="txtNewPassword"><?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('Password'); ?></label>
<input id="txtNewPassword" type="password" name="NewPassword" value="<?php echo $this->Applicant->NewPassword; ?>" class="Input" />
</li>
<li>
<label for="txtConfirmPassword"><?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('PasswordAgain'); ?></label>
<input id="txtConfirmPassword" type="password" name="ConfirmPassword" value="<?php echo $this->Applicant->ConfirmPassword; ?>" class="Input" />
</li><?php
$this->CallDelegate('PostInputsRender');
$this->CallDelegate('PreTermsCheckRender');
?>

<li id="TermsOfServiceCheckBox">
<?php echo GetBasicCheckBox('AgreeToTerms', 1, $this->Applicant->AgreeToTerms,' id="AgreeToTerms"'); ?>

<label for="AgreeToTerms" style="display: inline; float: none; width: auto;"><?php
echo str_replace(
'//1',
' <a href="' . $TermsOfServiceUrl . '" '
. 'onclick="PopTermsOfService(\'' . $TermsOfServiceUrl . '\'); return false;">'
. $this->Context->GetDefinition('TermsOfService') . '</a>',
$this->Context->GetDefinition('IHaveReadAndAgreeTo')
);
?></label>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="Submit">
<input type="submit" name="btnApply" value="<?php echo $this->Context->GetDefinition('Proceed'); ?>" class="Button" />
</div>
</form>
</fieldset>
</div>

perhaps u can look at phptemplate. used in drupal
http://drupal.org/node/11810

will u be using ur own framework or are u considering Zend Framework.

one thing is for sure. you use smart people will complain how slow and bloated it is, and php developers now have to learn another syntax.
you don't use smarty people will complain you didn't use smarty cause its so simple

either way be prepared to be flamed. :)

OH make it Php 5.2 and Mysql 4 as minimum
http://www.gophp5.org/

I've looked at the zend framework, and it is definitely awesome. It does just about everything that I want to be able to do in Vanilla2. But it is absolutely massive and I don't believe that it was created with a product like Vanilla in mind. More likely it was created to ease development of projects that most people never see the source for (ie. a single website that is not distributed). One of the things about Vanilla2 is that I want it to be small (smaller than Vanilla 1), and that won't happen with zend. Less is most definitely more - with Vanilla.

Max - I will certainly take a look at HoP when I get into development :)

I always thought vanilla is vanilla cause it doesn't have bloat in terms of feature. cause if size is what matters than punbb (120k) is vanilla

just looked at the folder sizes of zend framework
excluding Locale, Gdata, PDF, Service and Measure stuff, rest of the stuff compressed to 792kb

to compress it further than 792kb
Take out Oracle and DB2 support from the DB Component
Components like Feed,MIME, json and XMLRPC can be via addons so u can exclude them from core as well.
If you go through, i'm sure you can remove lot of other stuff we don't need and get it real small

plus point is free promotion of vanilla by Zend, who knows you might even be called to give a speech at PHP conferences, all expense paid by zend avcourse :)

Couple of years I'd guess.

@adrian

How's porting Vanilla over to Smarty coming along?

I'm gonna step in and say boo to using Smarty.

Vanilla has already separated presentation logic from core functionality; all a developer has to do is edit the themes/* files. And what's more: a developer only needs to copy files that are changed from the default theme. This method is ideal because it keeps the filesystem clean and makes theme maintenance even easier. It's this same streamlined templating system that originally drew me to Vanilla. By adding another layer in between the core and the presentation logic is going to cause completely unnecessary overhead on every new page request.

Smarty is great for static pages (ie: blogs) because of its caching abilities, but there's no place for it in an application as dynamic as a forum.</rant>

Whatever solution is used, I believe it should remain small, both in terms of files on the system, and overall file size; and it needs to be fast.

Using "echo" to in middle of code to output HTML/CSS is NOT the way to "separate" code from presentation.

What you're talking about to modifying the css theme, and nothing more.

@frooyo,

Like I said, all the presentation logic is nicely tucked in the themes/ folder. A quick search for 'echo' in the library/ yields that only a few 'echo' statements are left, most of them for error messages. The only file that uses echo heavily is library/Framework/Framework.Class.AsyncUploader.php which isn't even used in the default installation of Vanilla. Give me one example of where an 'echo' (or any presentational function) statement is used in non-presentational code (not in the themes/ folder). If not all of the presentational elements have been cleaned out of the Vanilla library, they are probably in the pipeline for refactoring.

All Smarty will do is simply replace the PHP logic in the themes/* files with Smarty logic, requiring those files to go through another interpreter (Smarty parser) to convert it to PHP, only after that is it then processed by the PHP parser and then sent to the browser. Pretty convoluted if you ask me.

For those that argue Smarty is good for caching, I don't see much benefit when applied to a dynamic application like Vanilla. Ideally, in Vanilla, the only way to really speed it up is to cache database result sets (query results), and introduce a cache manager that deletes cache files when they become outdated.