[TYPO3-dev] Discussion about Templates, Smarty etc...

[Johannes Reichardt]

Hi there,

i would just like to put my narrowminded 2 cents on this topic. 
Basically the problem for me with Typo3 is the wide-spreadedness of 
configurations and a time consuming mix of hardcoded and configurable 
things. On top of this Typo3 comes with lots of nasty default behaviours 
and preprocesses things more than necessary.

So my wish for Typo3 5.0 would be: Just keep things in place. Typoscript 
or a successor of it should just be the mastertemplate that puts in 
extensions and FE content in general. On the other hand extensions 
should be changed only in their own directory to avoid confusion and 
"ugly" typoscript templates that are hard to read, setting "PAGE" 
targets to "" etc... etc... Right now there is no intuitive hierarchy of 
"controlplaces".

That may sound harsh since i believe that typoscript is very very 
powerful to do other things (i remember Kaspers box of cohibars that got 
rendered on the fly with typoscript) - but its just another complex 
layer that most people will never be able to use like php. No matter if 
you make it objected or not. Instead i would propose a well thought set 
of very well documented functions that are freely accessible (no FE / BE 
separation) that make extension programmers powerful with php.

Also i don´t think you will ever be able to separate logic and design 
enough to make everybody happy - so why whould you try so hard? 
Therefore we should concentrate that Backend editors have a nice and 
fully configurable backend (with "clean" defaults) and programmers / 
designers *intuitive* ways to achieve their programming / designing 
goals. Making a HTML table smaller or bigger is a thing of 5 minutes 
anyway if everything is in place and intiutivly to find. And i wouldnt 
care too much if a designer could that better in theory or a programmer. 
Personally i am really sick of searching things in Typo3, that holds me 
personally back most.

My conclusion: Typo3 should have its internal goodies and functions more 
obviously accessible to FE and BE programmers and Typoscript (or 
successor) should be a simple glue *only* to put things together in the 
FE. All configuration of extensions should be done where they are 
installed through templates and / or scripts holding important 
variables. AND Typo3 5.0 should not process a single line by default ;) 
(still don´t know how to put a plain "&" in the title of my site) - that 
would speed things really up i guess.

So thats my wishlist for christmas 2007, santa! :)

- Johannes