Re: Issues and Advantages module Text::Template

[sundialsvc4]

You asked for personal opinions, therefore, I will offer mine.

Usually, in real life, the templating decision – including plenty of “home-grown” – has been made for you by an unknown predecessor.   I have seen Text::Template in use, although I observe Template::Toolkit more frequently.

One issue that should be of concern is, not to let the project “fall into the PHP rabbit-hole,” where there is no separation-of-concerns between the preparation of material to be displayed, and the display of it.   By their design, tools such as Text::Template are more prone to this.   The problem becomes that, now, the total source-code becomes shared among a large number of modules – templates and otherwise – which now become coupled.   When a change inevitably needs to be made (marketing departments are never still ...), that change can “ripple” through a large number of files – and, if there are very many, you are quite likely to overlook at least one of them.   Especially in the hands of a former-PHP person, the temptations become very strong.

Functionally ... performance-wise ... all of the main-stream tools are solid work-horses which earn their oats every day.   You should look the project over very carefully, and loop-in the other developers and interested parties so that you all make the final decision by consensus.   If time allows, I would encourage you to ask several developers other than yourself to each construct a short program that produces the HTML for a simple page, each one using a separate tool.   Then, circle-the-wagons and have each one of them present and discuss what they did.   As long as you they stick to the main stream, none of the choices that could be made will be “wrong,” but any decision that is made will be forevermore.