I just felt I had to reply to reach closure with the first question and also first post to the Monastery I ever wrote: I ended up going the exact same route. I now swear by
Template Toolkit. In fact I find it hard to stick to pipelining sometimes - but I'm getting better at drawing the line between what is application logic and should be calculated in the script and what is display logic and should be done in the template. It's a great tool, albeit not the easiest one to get started with (both in terms of installation as well as usage). At this point I can no longer imagine inhabiting a host which doesn't and doesn't want to offer it.
Makeshifts last the longest.
