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I don't know if this is too complicated, or too simple. What do we do if we have three different "default" opac results templates? What about a per-user preference for different templates? Maybe language should be dealt with completely separately...

I know there was some thought (might've been on the users list) of appearance (different color schemes, buttons, etc) templates (ie, skins) in addition to language. But that might just be following the open source pack mentality that (apparently) everything must have a customizable appearance... :) Nick

Hi Steve, Tonnesen Steve wrote:

After a bit of playing with HTML::Template I have the following proposal

[--snip--]

Templates stored in includes directory under templates subfolder, each module (ie search, circ, catalog, etc.) has another subfolder, then another subfolder for each template, and then subfolders for each version of that template.

Includes Templates Search Opac Search default.tmpl polish.tmpl french.tmpl local.tmpl Librarian Search

[--snip--]

I don't know if this is too complicated, or too simple. What do we do if we have three different "default" opac results templates? What about a per-user preference for different templates? Maybe language should be dealt with completely separately...

Just airing some thoughts...

These are not direct answers to your question but I hope they are useful nonetheless: The first distinction i'd draw is between the html "active content" versus the content "look and feel" For example, in the current koha, the "active content" control is partially implemented using the "type=" parameter in the *.pl files: Where the "active content" is displayed differently depending on the "type" of user accessing the file (the "active content" and "look and feel" depend on whether the "type" param equals "intra" or "opac" for example) It looks to me like the "type" options in combination with the new hierarchy might be getting overly complex? Raison d'etre for the "type" option is based on access level considerations as much as "look and feel"? If that is so, then the primary need may be for the admin to be able to specify an "html template set" based on user access level, and only secondarily on "look and feel"? For example - there may be three distinctly different versions of /catalogue/index.html depending on whether the user is a "NonMember", "Member", "Librarian", etc... For ease of controlling user access via a webserver (various flavours of auth), then the directory hierarchy might look more like: Includes Templates NonMember Search default.tmpl polish.tmpl french.tmpl local.tmpl Member Search default.tmpl polish.tmpl french.tmpl local.tmpl Librarian Search default.tmpl polish.tmpl french.tmpl local.tmpl This would allow webserver authentication control at the parent folder level and possibly for the admin to specify root path based on a user access level? I dunno if this is useful input in relation to your central question about HTML::Template - but I hope it makes sense at least :) R.