better template engine?

[next]

Ok, so i checked out smarty and to be honest i'm really disappointed. Things that i didn't like:

a) syntax

b) "if(blah = blah)" is not the same as "if (blah = blah)", smarty pretty much forces you to you a space.

I'm pretty sure there is more, but i don't want to look.

 

What template engine is easy to learn with a nice syntax and is not that picky?

 

Thanks.

[chronister]

I personally hate the templating systems that are out there. Most of them make you learn a "new language" just to use them.

 

I simply make my own "templating system" in the way of includes and reusable functions that generally don't handle any formatting or html display. I say generally because I do use some functions that explicitly display html but for the purpose of simplifying things.

 

What kind of templating are you looking for? Do you just want to avoid duplicating menus / headers / footers and the like? Or are you looking for FULL ON templating where you put something like

 

{username} and the username is displayed?

 

Elaborate a little more and if I can help I will share some of the "templating" tricks I use.

 

Nate