PHP is a good templating language, similar to ASP, JSP, etc. The problem with templating languages is that they're too good. It's always tempting for the programmer to introduce yet another small piece of logic into a page.
It extremely difficult with these templating languages to abstract the various layers of a moderately complex application. Many applications can be split into three layers (model, view, and controller). The model is the underlying structure of your data, which won't differ whether you're accessing the data through the web, the command line, or a GUI. The view is a thin skin which presents the model on a particular platform (HTML, text, Tk, etc.). The controller validates user input, and decides what happens next. Templating languages are excellent for building the view layer Using mod_perl and template toolkit, or servlets and JSP, or COM and ASP, it's easy to write applications with clear boundaries between layers. With only the templating language, the model and controller are forced into the view layer, which soon becomes unmaintainable. However, PHP is fine for building quick and dirty webpages, which is what most people want. -- Nigel Wetters, Senior Programmer, Development Group Rivals Digital Media Ltd, 151 Freston Road, London W10 6TH Tel. 020 8962 1346 (direct line), Fax. 020 8962 1311 http://www.rivalsdm.com/ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
