[[!tag wishlist]] HTML::Template is an okay templating kit, but it lacks a lot of powerful features and thus makes it rather hard to give an ikiwiki site a consistent look. If you browse the templates provided in the tarball, you'll notice that more than one of them contain the `<html>` tag, which is unnecessary. Maybe it's just me, I also find HTML::Template cumbersome to use, due in part to its use of capital letters. Finally, the software seems unmaintained: the mailing list and searchable archives linked from <http://html-template.sourceforge.net/html_template.html#frequently%20asked%20questions> are broken and the author has not replied to my query in months. I would love to see ikiwiki use the [Template Toolkit](http://template-toolkit.org/) as templating engine. One major reason for TT is its use of slots, a concept I first encountered with Zope Page Templates and never wanted to miss it again. Let me quickly illustrate, using the HTML::Template syntax for simplicity. Traditionally, templating is done with includes: Page A Page B <TMPL_INCLUDE header> <TMPL_INCLUDE header> this is page A this is page B <TMPL_INCLUDE footer> <TMPL_INCLUDE footer> This involves four pages, and if you mistype "footer" on page B, it'll be broken in potentially subtle ways. Now look at the approach with slots: MainTemplate This is the header <TMPL_SLOT content> This is the footer Page A Page B <TMPL_USE MainTemplate> <TMPL_USE MainTemplate> <TMPL_FILL content> <TMPL_FILL content> This is page A This is page B </TMPL_FILL> </TMPL_FILL> </TMPL_USE> </TMPL_USE> As soon as you think about more structure pages with various slots to fill, I am sure you can see the appeal of that approach. If not, here is some more documentation: <http://wiki.zope.org/ZPT/METALSpecification11> I would be glad to volunteer time to make this switch happen, such as rewrite the templates. I'd prefer not having to touch Perl though... ----- Yes, Template::Toolkit is very powerful. But I think it's somehow overkill for a wiki. HTML::Template can keep things simple, though. --[weakish](http://weakish.int.eu.org/blog/)