[dev] Smarty & Horde

[steve]

Here is a list of main changes:
- for the PEAR module, I added a constant to specify where the PEAR module 
is installed; I can't use the ini_set with the ISP: Lycos; there are also 2 
methods more for the Date package. That is why I had to provide big files 
to download (Pear, framework, ...)
- for Horde, I rewrote the html method (from the Turba, Kronolith, ... 
objects). From now, what has to be shown on the screen follows the Smarty 
rules and is in a separate directory (/templates) For the rest, the 
backends, ... are the same. That means on a same computer, you can access 
the data from what I did or from the Horde portal.
- for the speed, it looks as fast as Horde (at least on my computer, and on 
the month view), but I don't have any benchmark to propose you.

 From Kronolith, I (re)implemented:
- month view
- day view (the time slot, - 30 minutes by default-, can be easy changed)
- add/remove/view event

 From Turba, there are:
- view from a source
- add a contact to a group

I did this because I wanted to use the Kronolith backend, but I didn't like 
the design of the web site (it looked difficult to integrate in something 
really different). The design (I borrowed it from an open source design web 
site) is really modular (maybe too much) with a full use of CSS & xhtml. 
Smarty brings the possibility to use cache and to improve the speed to 
another scale (not use at this time).

Unfortunately, there is one (at least) big downgrade, it is difficult to do 
a multi lingual web site. It is not as easy as _("").

A long time ago (6 months or more), there was a talk here, to say if we 
could use Smarty, or Horde_Template on every pages; and a guy worked on 
login.php I think. Also, some people were afraid by the speed. Now we have 
a proof the Smarty are Horde can be integrated (that means everybody (and 
ISP) can offer Horde with a complete different web site. Besides, I am not 
sure that it is the goal of Horde developers to work also on a specific 
template engine (since there is already a good one in the market; a good 
article about it can be found here: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1218/).

The question is more now: What is the Horde team thinks about using Smarty?


>Quoting steve <mailling at gmx.co.uk>:
>
> > I worked on a project to make Horde and Smarty (template engine) working
> > together.
> > I put a demo on a Lycos web server, and it is very slow (sometimes 30
> > seconds to get a calendar page), but I hope you will try it and like it as
> > much as me (it runs much faster on a 'normal' web server).
>
>How does the speed compare to regular Horde?
>
> > At this time, it is more a proof of concept than anything else, event if
> > some features of horde, kronolith and turba are ...
>...snip...
> >... back end
> > - Horde forms
> > - calendars
> > - list of a Turba source
> > - ...
> >
> > I would be please to have your opinion about it.
>
>Well, what's the point? Can you say more about how you organized things, what
>you changed, etc.? What do you get out of this? What advantage does it have
>over the Horde apps that are build with Horde_Template?
>
>I guess it's just so much changed that I wonder what you want us to do
>with it.
>:)
>
>-chuck