Posted by Vicente Werner on 04/06/05 16:55

On Apr 6, 2005 2:01 AM, David Ngo <dngo@getlisa.com> wrote:
> We are not talking about building a new template system here. What
> they are proposing is just using html/php as a template which will be an
> include file. We would also then have to come up with our own functions
> for displaying listboxes, radio buttons, tables etc. Yes that sounds a
> lot like Smarty, but the argument is that they would not have to learn
> Smarty that way and the php/html templates would be much simpler since
> everyone at work knows php but I'm the only one that knows Smarty.
php + html templates will double your maintenance costs respect to a
smarty based systems. Some stats from two similar bussines sites I
made (one using php+html) the 2nd with smarty:

Concept NON-SMARTY SMARTY

Initial Lines 70000
27570

Time to add a
credit card
gateway to
"La Caixa" 4 days 1 day

Support for
versions in 3
languages 2 1/2 Weeks 1 Week

Resulting
code lines 91000 35000+-

>Our
> new programmer claims that she can write the xml caching in 6 lines of
> code using a harvester. I find that very hard to believe but maybe she
> can? I really cannot rule that out immediately without seeing the code,
> which by the way has not been written yet.
You can do pretty primitive caching in such lines, but it will
certainly lack the flexibility and power of smarty.

> We have had problems a few times because the designer was
> designing header/navigation/footer templates in plain php/html and I had
> the same templates for myself in Smarty.
That's a comunication problem, it's not dependent on smarty. If your
company comunication workflow is deficient it will produce the same
problems wheter or not you're using smarty.

I've had the same problems with a php+html system (the designer forgot
to send the correct ones...)

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