Template Toolkit Version 2.04 29 June 2001 Copyright (C) 1996-2001 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved Copyright (C) 1998-2001 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd. This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. QUICK START ----------- The latest version of the Template Toolkit can be retrieved from: http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Template/ Fetch and install AppConfig 1.52 if you don't already have it installed. Available from CPAN in: http://www.cpan.org/authors/Andy_Wardley/ The following modules are optional. If you have them installed then you will be able to access them via the appropriate Template Toolkit plugins. If you don't have them and don't want them, then there's no need to install them. They're all available from CPAN if you do. Text::Autoformat 1.03+ DBI 1.14+ (and relevant DBD drivers) GD 1.32+ GD::Text 0.80+ GD::Graph 1.33+ GD::Graph3d 0.55+ Pod::POM 0.1+ XML::Parser 2.23+ XML::DOM 1.27+ (in libxml-enno) XML::RSS 0.9+ XML::XPath 1.00+ To install the Template Toolkit: tar zxf Template-Toolkit-2.04.tar.gz cd Template-Toolkit-2.04 perl Makefile.PL make make test make install The Makefile.PL will prompt for additional configuration options, including the installation of optional template libraries, HTML documentation and examples. You can safely answer 'n' to all of these questions for a quick and basic installation. For further details, see the sections below on CONFIGURATION, BUILDING AND TESTING, and INSTALLATION. DESCRIPTION ----------- The Template Toolkit is a collection of modules which implement a fast, flexible, powerful and extensible template processing system. It was originally designed and remains primarily useful for generating dynamic web content, but it can be used equally well for processing any other kind of text based documents: HTML, XML, POD, PostScript, LaTeX, and so on. It can be used as a stand-alone Perl module or embedded within an Apache/mod_perl server for generating highly configurable dynamic web content. A number of Perl scripts are also provided which can greatly simplify the process of creating and managing static web content and other offline document systems. Version 2 is a near-total rewrite which adds many new features while remaining *almost* fully backwardly compatible with version 1 (see 'VERSION COMPATABILITY' below). The internal design and architecture have been greatly improved and the template language offers a number of powerful new directives, while retaining all but the broken, buggy, undocumented or experimental features that had crept into versions 0.* and 1.* over the years. Version 2 also offers important performance benefits, running significantly faster and using less memory than version 1. This can only be described as a Good Thing. The Template Toolkit (version 1) received the award for "Best New Perl Module" at the 4th Perl Conference in Monterey last year (2000). Version 2 is even better and if it doesn't make your content funkier, your job easier, your life more fun and you more attractive to the appropriate sex, then you can always return it for a full refund. :-) WHAT'S NEW? ----------- Version 2.04 is mainly a bug fixing version. Version 2.03 includes Craig Barratt's 'latex' filter and GD plugins. The latex filter allow you to create PostScript/PDF/DVI output from LaTeX source templates. The GD plugins allow you to access the GD::* modules to create dynamic images using template. There have been some improvements to VIEWs and they now work harmoniously with the XML::XPath and XML::DOM plugins for doing template based transformations of XML to other formats. The HTML plugin is new (but currently very basic) and some of the Splash! and HTML library templates have been updated and some new components added. There's a new tutorial from Dave Cross on using the Template Toolkit for creating and reusing data files. There's various other updates to the documentation, numerous minor bug fixes and other general improvements. Version 2.02 followed shortly on the heels of version 2.01, fixing up some of the minor installation bugs and other problems that came to light. Here's a quick summary of what's new since version 2.00. See the Changes file for more details. Documentation * Total overhaul of the documentation: existing content reorganised into several different sections, documentation added for new features, a FAQ and also a section on internals. Now also available in user-customisable HTML format, in addition to POD. Libraries * The Template Toolkit now includes template libraries for generating HTML, PostScript and converting POD to HTML (and other formats). The Splash! library is a powerful HTML widget set for generating stylish user interfaces. Includes components for elements like tables, menu buttons, panels with borders and header/footer bars, edged boxes with index tabs, etc. Language * Multiple templates can be specified to directives using '+' [% PROCESS header + menu + body + footer title = "Hello World" %] * Template variables for INCLUDE, etc., can now be full expressions. [% INCLUDE header title = my_title or your_title or default_title bgcol = (style == 'dark' ? '#000000' : '#ffffff') %] * Namespace prefixes can be used to bind templates to a particular provider. [% INCLUDE file:header + database:header %] [% INCLUDE http://foo.com/bar %] # alas no 'http' provider...yet * Powerful new (but experimental) VIEW directive and/or plugin to provide dynamic view objects. These can be used to implement "skins" and other general purpose objects to manage user interface elements and present views of user data. See Template::Manual::Views manpage for further details. * Various other language enhancements: CHOMP_COLLAPSE option, 'import=myhash' as magical variable for INCLUDE, etc. * New filters: indent, trim and collapse * New plugins: File and Directory plugins for file/directory information. Pod plugin interfaces to Pod::POM for converting Pod to other formats (e.g. HTML). Internals * Template::Plugin base class no longer implements AUTOLOAD method. * Numerous bugs fixed including some troublesome memory leaks. * Various other minor internal improvements. GENERAL FEATURES ---------------- Some of the key features of the Template Toolkit are listed below. See the documentation for further detail. * simple but powerful template language * promotes a clear separation between application functionality and presentation elements * variable substitution allows binding to any Perl data types (scalars, hashes, lists, subs, objects) * conditional blocks (IF/UNLESS/ELSIF/ELSE, SWITCH/CASE) * loops and iterators (FOREACH, WHILE) * file/template inclusion (INSERT, INCLUDE, PROCESS, WRAPPER) * definition of local template components (BLOCK) * post-processing filters (FILTER) * plugin module architecture for easy extensibility (USE) * embedded Perl can be optionally enabled (PERL/RAWPERL) * full exception handling (TRY/THROW/CATCH/FINAL) * user-defined macros (MACRO) * definition of template metadata (META) * virtual methods for complex data types (e.g. list.size, hash.keys, etc.) * numerous configuration options * modular OO architecture allows extensive customisation * fast LALR(1) parser modules compiles templates according to a YACC-like grammar. * templates compiled to Perl code for efficient runtime execution * in-memory and on-disk caching of compiled templates * simple front end module (Template.pm) for ease of use * numerous plugin modules: CGI, DBI, XML, URL, Date, Table, etc * standard filters for html, case folding, regex search and replace, etc. PREREQUISITES ------------- The Template Toolkit is written entirely in Perl and should run on any platform on which Perl is available. It requires Perl 5.005 or later. The 'ttree' utility uses the AppConfig module (version 1.52 or above) for parsing command line options and configuration files. It is available from CPAN: http://www.cpan.org/authors/Andy_Wardley/ The Template Toolkit implements a "plugin" architecture which allow you to incorporate the functionality of virtually any Perl module into your templates. A number of plugin modules are included with the distribution for interfacing to databases (DBI), XML files (XML::DOM, XML::RSS, XML::XPath), CGI scripts (CGI), and so on. Some of these plugin modules are dependant on external modules but these are not pre-requisites for installation. All plugin modules are installed, regardless of any unsatisfied dependencies, so that you can install an external module at a later date and then use the plugin without requiring re-installation of the Template Toolkit. If you want to enable all plugin modules then the following modules, all available from CPAN, should be installed: Plugin Requires ------ -------- Autoformat Text::Autoformat 1.03+ DBI DBI 1.14+ and relevant DBD drivers GD GD 1.32+ GD::Text GD::Text 0.80+ GD::Graph GD::Graph 1.33+ GD::Graph::lines3d GD::Graph3d 0.55+ Pod Pod::POM 0.1+ XML::DOM XML::DOM 1.27+ (requires XML::Parser 2.23+) XML::RSS XML::RSS 0.9+ (ditto) XML::XPath XML::XPath 1.00+ (ditto) NOTES: * XML::DOM can be found in the 'libxml-enno' distribution, available from http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/XML/ OBTAINING AND INSTALLING THE TEMPLATE TOOLKIT --------------------------------------------- The latest release version of the Template Toolkit can be downloaded from any CPAN site: http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Template/ Interim and development versions may also be available, along with other useful information, news, publications, mailing list archives, etc., from the Template Toolkit web site: http://www.template-toolkit.org/ The Template Toolkit is distributed as a gzipped tar archive file: Template-Toolkit-.tar.gz where represents the current version number, e.g. 2.04. To install the Template Toolkit, unpack the distribution archive to create an installation directory. Something like this: tar zxf Template-Toolkit-2.04.tar.gz or gunzip Template-Toolkit-2.04.tar.gz tar xf Template-Toolkit-2.04.tar You can then 'cd' into the directory created, cd Template-Toolkit-2.04 and perform the usual Perl installation procedure: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install # may need root access The Makefile.PL performs various sanity checks and then prompts for a number of configuration items. The following CONFIGURATION section covers this in greater detail. There are known to be a few minor issues with the test suite, with some tests failing in certain conditions. None of these are thought to be serious problems. The BUILDING AND TESTING section provides more detail on this. If you choose to install the optional components then you may need to perform some post-installation steps to ensure that the template libraries, HTML documentation and examples can be correctly viewed via your web browser. The INSTALLATION section covers this. CONFIGURATION ------------- This section covers the configuration of the Template Toolkit via the Makefile.PL program. If you've successfully run this and didn't have any problems answering any of the questions then you probably don't need to read this section. The Makefile.PL Perl program performs the module configuration and generates the Makefile which can then be used to build, test and install the Template Toolkit. perl Makefile.PL It first determines which modules you have installed to configure the test suite accordingly. If you have the DBI module installed then it will ask you if you want to run the DBI tests. Do you want to run the DBI tests?\n" . It requires access to an existing test database. [y] If you answer 'y' then it will prompt you for the DBD driver and the data source parameters (name, user, password) required to connect to the relevant database. Please ensure that your database server is running and that the database you specify exists before executing 'make test' (otherwise, expect a failure for the t/dbi.t test). The latex filter, new to release 2.03, allows you to generate PostScript, PDF and DVI files directly from LaTeX source templates. It relies on 3 external programs which the Makefile.PL script will attempt to locate. You will then be prompted to enable or disable the latex filter: TT2 supports PDF, DVI and PostScript output using the latex filter, implemented with the programs pdflatex, latex and dvips. Because the latex filter runs latex and pdflatex, template authors could use this feature to include any arbitrary file in their latex input, or also open an arbitrary output file, independent of the ABSOLUTE or RELATIVE configuration settings. This might create a security concern at your site. If you don't trust your template authors then don't enable the latex filter. I found the following locations for pdflatex, latex and dvips: + pdflatex => /usr/bin/pdflatex + latex => /usr/bin/latex + dvips => /usr/bin/dvips Do you want to enable the latex filter? [y] Are the pdflatex, latex and dvips paths ok? [y] In additional to the Perl modules and POD documentation installed in the usual way, the Template Toolkit distribution also contains a number of optional components. * Template libaries for basic HTML, Pod -> HTML, and PostScript * Splash! - a stylish HTML user interface template library / widget set * HTML documentation - distributed in template form for customisation * Stylesheet templates to generate docs as vanilla HTML or using Splash! * Examples - numerous examples of using the template libraries The Makefile.PL will prompt to ask if you want these components installed. Do you want to install these components? [y] If you answer 'y' then you will first be asked to specify an installation directory. This directory should be separate from your Perl installation directories. If your operating system is Unix or Win32 then you should be offered a reasonable default. Suggestions welcome for the correct values on other platforms. Unix: Installation directory [/usr/local/tt2] Win32: Installation directory [C:/Program Files/Template Toolkit 2] The Splash! template library uses a number of very small images to build user interface components. These will be installed (when you "make install") into the 'images' directory relative to the installation root specified above. If you want to use the Splash! library then you'll need to copy this images directory, define an alias to it (e.g. in the httpd.conf) or create a symbolic link to it so that your web server can find and serve the images within. The INSTALLATION section below gives further details about how you might go about doing that, but for now you just need to specify what URL you plan to use. URL base for TT2 images? [/tt2/images] If you're installing on a Windows machine then the default value will be based on the installation directory specified above. This should allow you to browse the documentation and any other Splash! files you create, with the images being accessed in the browser via the filesystem. e.g. URL base for TT2 images? [C:/Program Files/Template Toolkit 2/images] On other platforms, we assume you'll be delivering the images via a web server and the default will be '/tt2/images'. Other typical values might be '/images/tt2', '/~yourid/tt2/images' or even something like 'http://www.yourhost.org/images/tt2'. If you haven't got a clue then it's probably best to accept the default and worry about it later when you get to the INSTALLATION section. If you don't plan to use the Splash! library then you don't need to worry about this at all. You can accept the default, or type in a silly message to bring some small amusement to an otherwise dull process. The modules comprising the Template Toolkit contain comprehensive POD documentation which can be browsed using 'perldoc' or 'man' (if your system supports it). This is all installed as the regular Perl part of the Template Toolkit. The distribution also includes a set of source templates and style elements for generating the same documentation in HTML format. These will be installed into the 'docs' directory relative to the installation root entered above. The HTML documentation can be built for you at "make install" time in a plain and simple HTML format or using the Splash! library. You can see examples of these different styles and browse the documentation online at: http://www.template-toolkit.org/docs/ To have the HTML documentation built as part of the installation process, answer 'y' to the question: Do you want to build the HTML documentation? [y] and then specify if you want it built using the vanilla HTML style (answer: 'n') or using the Splash! library (answer: 'y'). The latter comes highly recommended for those readers who enjoy a small dose of of gratuitous eye candy served with their web pages, but if you answer 'y' and select Splash! then you'll have to ensure that the images URL specified above is properly set. Do you want to use the Splash! library? [y] If you prefer your pages clean and simple and/or can't be bothered messing around configuring image directories, then select 'n' to generate the plain document style. This generates a "text-only" HTML version, entirely free of graphics and embellished with no more than textual navigatory links. If you do specify that you want to use the Splash! library then you will be prompted to select a colour scheme. Which Splash! colour scheme would you like to use to build the documentation? Acceptable values are: Name Colours ------------------------- default lilac/mauve aqua aqua/marine blue grey75/blue75 green grey75/green75 grey grey75/grey50 red grey75/red75 Enter name of Splash scheme: [default] You can see examples of these different colour schemes at the Template Toolkit web site, as above: http://www.template-toolkit.org/docs/ See the README in the 'docs' directory for instructions on building the HTML documentation manually and/or customising the templates to your own requirements. The final optional component is a set of examples showing use of the HTML, Splash! and PostScript template libraries. These are installed into the 'examples' directory under the installation root and can also be automatically built at "make install" time. Do you want to build the HTML example pages? [y] Note that the examples rely on using the Splash! library and there is no vanilla HTML version (currently) available. The examples mainly focus on Splash! and other "advanced" HTML stuff so it probably wouldn't make much sense, anyway. Note that the PostScript examples are far from complete (only just begun, in fact). BUILDING AND TESTING -------------------- This section describes the "make" and "make test" commands which build and test the Template Toolkit. If you ran these without incident, then you can probably skip this section. The 'make' command will build the Template Toolkit modules in the usual manner. make If you're installing the Template Toolkit on a Win32 machine, then you should be using 'nmake' instead. This is available from Microsoft's ftp site. ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe The 'make test' command runs the test scripts in the 't' subdirectory. There is known to be at least one failures under certain conditions: * The Text::Autoformat plugin may fail on tests 23 and 25 with versions of Perl prior to 5.6.0 when using a locale which has a decimal separator other than '.'. You can set the TEST_VERBOSE flag when running 'make test' to see the results of the individual tests: make test TEST_VERBOSE=1 INSTALLATION ------------ This section describes the final installation of the Template Toolkit via the "make install" and covers any additional steps you may need to take if you opted to build the HTML documentation and/or examples. The 'make install' will install the modules and scripts on your system. You may need administrator privileges to perform this task. Alternately you can can install the Template Toolkit to a local directory (see ExtUtils::MakeMaker for full details), e.g. perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/home/abw/ Don't forget to update your PERL5LIB environment variable if you do this, or add a line to your script to tell Perl where to find the files, e.g. use lib qw( /home/abw/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 ); If you chose to install the optional components then these will be also be installed as part of the "make install" procedure. They are installed into the separate Template Toolkit directory (independant of any Perl location) specified during the configuration process. Note that you must have the correct permissions required to create and/or write to this directory. If you run the "make install" as root, or some other privileged user, then the directory will be created (if it doesn't already exist) and all the files installed into it will be owned by that user. If you want to use the Splash! template library then you will need to ensure that the images URL base you specified during the configuration correctly maps onto the 'images' subdirectory of the installation. If you built the HTML documentation then you'll also want to make that available via your web server. If you're installing in a Win32 machine and accepted the default values above then you should already be able to browse the HTML documentation and examples via the browser and have it display correctly. Otherwise, you'll need to tweak the web server configuration, create links to the files or copy them to where the web server can find them. If you're using Apache then you might do something like this in the httpd.conf (in the section, and here assumes /usr/local/tt2 is installation root) Alias /tt2/images/ /usr/local/tt2/images/ Alias /tt2/docs/ /usr/local/tt2/docs/html/ Alias /tt2/examples/ /usr/local/tt2/examples/html/ Options Indexes AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all Another approach is to create a 'tt2' directory in your document root and create symbolic links to the relevant installation directories. On a Unix system, it might be performed something like this: cd /path/to/your/webserver/docroot mkdir tt2 cd tt2 ln -s /usr/local/tt2/images images ln -s /usr/local/tt2/docs/html docs ln -s /usr/local/tt2/examples/html examples Note that if you use symbolic links, you'll have to make sure that you web server is configured to follow them. For example, in Apache: Options Indexes FollowSymLinks You should then be able to access the Template Toolkit documentation as: http://www.yourserver.org/tt2/docs/ and examples as: http://www.yourserver.org/tt2/examples/ If you haven't got configuration access to your webserver or don't want to go messing with it, then you can always copy everything to a user directory (or create links to it if your webserver is configured to follow them from your user directory). e.g. mkdir ~/public_html/tt2 cd ~/public_html/tt2 cp -R /usr/local/tt2/images . cp -R /usr/local/tt2/docs/html docs cp -R /usr/local/tt2/example/html examples You should then be able to access them as (for example): http://www.yourserver.org/~yourid/tt2/docs/ http://www.yourserver.org/~yourid/tt2/examples/ And of course, the value for the base URL of the Template Toolkit images (as specified in the configuration process) should be something like: /~yourid/tt2/images The examples and HTML docs (if you built them with Splash!) will reference the Splash! images using this URL (default: '/tt2/images'). If this value is incorrect then instead of smooth, rounded corners, the user interface components will have broken images links, square blocks of colour, or other ghastly abberations dotted across them. If necessary, you can re-install the Template Toolkit to specify a different image URL. Alternately, you can fix the value in the 'templates/splash/config' file (under the installation directory) and rebuild the documentation and/or examples. The Makefile generated by Makefile.PL contains 4 additional targets: tt2_install, tt2_splash, tt2_html_docs and tt2_examples (but only if you selected the appropriate options). These are run automatically as part of the "make install" (you can do "make pure_install" or "make doc_install" instead of "make install" to just get the Perl module or regular documentation installation by itself). You can also run them manually if you want to re-install the additional components, generate the Splash! images, rebuild the documentation or the examples at some later date: make tt2_install make tt2_splash make tt2_html_docs make tt2_examples The README files in the 'docs' and 'examples' directories contain futher information about rebuilding HTML and examples if you want to dig deeper. DOCUMENTATION ------------- The Template Toolkit is provided with enough documentation to keep all but the most voracious reader happy for quite some time. The 'Changes' file in the distribution directory documents all visible changes between versions of the Template Toolkit. See the section 'VERSION COMPATABILITY' below for further details. The 'TODO' file, also in the distribution directory, lists known bugs, planned enhancements and possible new features for future versions. The rest of the documentation is distributed in Pod and HTML formats. The Pod pages are installed when you 'make install' and can be viewed using 'perldoc', e.g. perldoc Template IMPORTANT NOTE: if you've had a previous verion of the Template Toolkit installed (e.g. version 2.00) then perldoc might be displaying an old version of the Pod documentation. This is because previous versions distributed the Pod in separate .pod files but it's now living back inside the relevant .pm files. Alas, perldoc selects the older .pod files in preference over the newer .pm. The only solution at present is to manually delete all the older .pod files in the Template part of your Perl installation directory. Of course, if I had thought of this back when I decided to move all the .pod back into the .pm files... If you're using a Unix based system then the pages should also be converted to manpages suring the 'make install'. Thus, you can also: man Template (the man pages shouldn't have any problems relating to older versions) The HTML documentation and the means to rebuild it can be found in the 'docs' sub-directory of the installation root. If you opted to have it built at installation time, then there should be an 'html' directory within it containing the generated HTML built from the source templates. The documentation is now split into several sections. The 'Template' page is now much shorter, containing information relating to the specifics of using the Template module, and a brief summary of everything else. Information relating more generally to the Template Toolkit, features, syntax of the template language, plugins and so forth, has been split up into a number of Template::Manual::* pages. Template::Manual provides the index for the manual. perldoc Template::Manual Individual sections can be viewed as, for example, perldoc Template::Manual::Syntax perldoc Template::Manual::Directives perldoc Template::Manual::Plugins The Template::Tutorial provides an index to the tutorial documents. There are currently 2 tutorials, on generating web content, and on creating and using data files. perldoc Template::Tutorial perldoc Template::Tutorial::Web perldoc Template::Tutorial::Datafile The new template libraries distributed with the Template Toolkit have some documentation, but be warned that it is rather spartan at present. If you're interested in using these libraries then the examples (in the 'examples' sub-directory) are likely to be much more useful until the documentation catches up. perldoc Template::Library::HTML perldoc Template::Library::Splash Each of the various modules that comprise the Template Toolkit has its own associated documention. The 'Template::Modules' manpage lists these modules along with a brief description of their functions. perldoc Template::Modules See the individual pages for further detail: perldoc Template::Context perldoc Template::Parser perldoc Template::Provider If you're interested in the internals of the Template Toolkit and want to know more about how it all works, then you might like to have a look at the following: perldoc Template::Manual::Internals The final bit of good news is that there is now a FAQ for the Template Toolkit. perldoc Template::FAQ It's now got a few question in it, and better still, some answers! Further contributions welcome. Most of the documentation is stable and reliable. Where it's not then it's usually marked as such. In particular, the documentation for the template libraries (Template::Library::*), the FAQ (Template::FAQ) and internals (Template::Internals) are all under construction. SUPPORT ------- The Template Toolkit mailing list provides a forum for discussing issues relating to the use and abuse of the Template Toolkit. There are a number of knowledgeable and helpful individuals who frequent the list (including the author) who can often offer help or suggestions. Please respect their time and patience by checking the documentation and/or mailing list archives before asking questions that may already have been answered. To subscribe to the mailing list, send an email to: templates-request@template-toolkit.org with the message 'subscribe' in the body. You can also use the web interface to subscribe or browse the archives: http://www.template-toolkit.org/mailman/listinfo/templates A low-volume, moderated mailing list exists for announcements about new releases of the Template Toolkit and related products. To subscribe, send an email to: templates-announce-request@template-toolkit.org with the message 'subscribe' in the body. A web interface also exists for subscription and browsing the archives: http://www.template-toolkit.org/mailman/listinfo/templates-announce For information about commercial support and consultancy for the Template Toolkit, please contact the author. VERSION COMPATABILITY --------------------- In language and feature terms, versions 2.03, 2.02 and 2.01 should be fully backwardly compatible with version 2.00. Internally, the only significant difference is that the Template::Plugin base class no longer implements an AUTOLOAD method. If you've written a plugin derived from the base class that relies on it (probably a bad idea anyway), then you'll need to add an AUTOLOAD of your own. Version 2.00 is backwardly compatible with version 1 in all but a few minor areas. The 'Changes' file details all the visible changes between version 1 and version 2, including deltas between alphas and betas. Within this file there is a 'Gotchas' section which lists the changes that may affect backwards compatability with existing template files. These are listed in brief below. Please consult the 'Changes' file for full details. * All directive keywords should now be written in UPPER CASE (by default) to avoid conflict with reserved words. The CASE option is now called ANYCASE and can be set true to permit lower case directive keywords. * CATCH blocks must now be scoped with a TRY block. * The ERROR directive is no longer supported. THROW an exception instead or use the 'stderr' filter if you really must write to STDERR and nowhere else. * The ERROR configuration option (previously used to customise the ERROR directive) is now used to specify handling for uncaught exceptions. * Version 1 allowed (but didn't recommend) the use of a leading '$' on a variable name (i.e. like Perl) which was silently ignored. Version 2 no longer ignores them and treats it as a variable pre-interpolation. Most of the time you *don't* want to do this, so don't add a leading '$' unless you know what you're doing. You can set V1DOLLAR => 1 to revert to the old behaviour if you really have to. * The default tag style for version 1 accepted [% ... %] or %% ... %% (the latter for backwards compatability with Text::MetaText, the predecessor to TT). Version 2 now only accepts [% ... %] by default. You can set TAG_STYLE => 'template1' to get both. * The 'into' filter is obsolete. You can now simply assign the output of a directive into a variable, e.g. [% foo = INCLUDE header %] * The IMPORT directive has been removed and replaced by an 'import' hash method. Most of the significant changes are in the internals of the Template Toolkit. If you have any v1 code that delves into the individual modules and tinkers with their guts then will need to check the 'Changes' file very carefully indeed and re-evaluate your code in the light of the new architecture. The internals are cleaner and better organised making extension code much easier to write. The downside is that some of the old and crusty ways you previously had to do things may no longer work. AUTHOR ------ The Template Toolkit was written by Andy Wardley with the invaluable assistance and contributions from many other people. See Template::Manual::Credits for details. COPYRIGHT --------- Copyright (C) 1996-2001 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved. Copyright (C) 1998-2001 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd. This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.