Paul M. Jones

I just released Savant version 2.3.0.

Normally, if you want to use a template plugin, you call the plugin() method like so:

<?php $this->plugin('myPlug', $arg1, $arg2); ?>

Through the magic of the overload() function in PHP and the __call() magic method, you can call plugins as if they were native Savant2 methods.

<?php $this->myPlug($arg1, $arg2); ?>

This should make for a little less typing and a little easier reading. For example, to generate a form with Savant2 using the 'form' plugin, you can now do something like this:

<?php
//
// start the form
$this->form('start');
//
// add a text field and label
$this->form('text', 'myTextField', 'default value',
    'Text field label:');
//
// add save and reset buttons as a group
$this->form('group', 'start', 'Group label:');
$this->form('submit', 'op', 'Save');
$this->form('reset', 'op', 'Reset');
$this->form('group', 'end');
//
// end the form
$this->form('end');
?>

(Indicentally, the 'form' plugin is pretty powerful; it support all standard field elements, handles layout, and generates valid XHTML with divs, labels, fieldsets, and tables. Check out the documentation for the 'form' plugin here.)

Savant is an object-oriented template system for PHP. Savant does not compile templates; instead, you write your templates as regular PHP scripts, so there's no new markup to learn. As such, Savant is a simple, elegant, and powerful alternative to Smarty.

UPDATE: (19:24 central time) There appears to be a problem with PHP5 and the __call() method in Savant 2.3.0. Users of PHP will want to test before using 2.3.0. I am working on a patch so that __call() works in Savant2 for both PHP4 and PHP5 transparently, and will blog about the solution at that time. Thanks for your patience.

With this release, sessions can be configured to not auto-start by adding a [Yawp] group 'session_start = false' directive and commenting out the [Auth] group, per request by David Glenn. Download the new version from phpyawp.com.

Also, I'm beginning work on Yawp2, which should be infinitely more configurable using a plugin architecture (suggested via proof-of-concept code from Ian Eure). Instead of being limited to the standard Yawp object set (Auth, Benchmark_Timer, Cache_Lite, DB, Log, and Var_Dump) you will be able to plug in any PEAR object and lazy-load it on first call, as well as autoload objects at Yawp::start() time (the current behavior). There will be support for convenience methods through the core Yawp object so that you can use method calls to a plugin without having to load the plugin yourself.

The idea behind Yawp is that you always need a certain set of single objects in your app: a database connection, a cache, authentication, a logger, and so on. Yawp instantiates, aggregates, and encapsulates those objects away from the global space so you can concentrate on the "real" part of your program. Does that mean Yawp is an example of aspect-oriented programming?

I just released Savant2 version 2.2.0; you can get it from phpsavant.com. Here are two of the changes:

* There is a new error handling class for PHP5 exceptions. When you call setError('exception'), Savant2 will throw a Savant2_Exception whenever there is an error (with the error code and message, of course). This is in addition to setError('pear') for PEAR_Error support, and setError('stack') for PEAR_ErrorStack support.

* By default, Savant does not compile templates. However, there are some cases where you don't want to provide your template designers with full PHP access; as such Savant2 has had support for external compilers. As an example, I have included a new Savant2_Compiler_basic class to show how to create a simple compiler for Savant2.

You can see the updated documentation here.

Savant is a lightweight object-oriented template system for PHP; I bill is as "the simple, elegant, and powerful alternative to Smarty."

Walter Williams has something to say about school violence toleration. Here are the final parargraph:

I say it's cruel and unreasonable to permit school thugs to make schools unsafe and education impossible for everyone else. Short of measures to immediately end school violence, parents at the minimum should be able to transfer their children out of unsafe failing public schools. Or, do you believe, as the education establishment does, that parents and children should be held hostage until they come up with a solution?

I love that last line, "...do you believe, as the education establishment does, that parents and children should be held hostage until they [the education establishment] come up with a solution?" I think the same phrasing, i.e. "being held hostage", applies to the whole public system.

When a school's administration is failing, they whine that they need more money and favors, and that the children can't be allowed to go anywhere else because that would jeopardize the school itself; that is nothing more than hostage-taking for the benefit of the administrators and the organization. I say the **children** are the important part of that situation, not the government education system -- let the parents save their kids from failing schools with vouchers.

In response to the idea that the Gummint should nationalize "health care" (it's really "medical care" but nobody ever says it that way) we have a great bit from code: theWebSocket; about how we need to nationalize legal care.

We could set it up like this: A new governmental organization, call it the Legal Security Administration, would be formed and paid for through payroll taxes. Lawyers will be given a set amount of money by the LSA to provide legal services for their clients. They will be rewarded when they bring a case in under budget by being able to keep whatever is left over from the preset reimbursement, and take the loss when they fail. These fees will be 60 cents on the dollar of what it costs to provide the services. Lawyers will initally complain that they can't make money at fees paid, but they will be told to just make it up in case volume. Those fee levels will be the basis for what they charge their private-pay clients, and price gouging will be severely punished.

Read the whole thing.

Bill Cosby is one of my favorite people ever. He's up there with Ben Stein. Cosby has been in the news this year and last for being a hardass about black kids raising themselves up out of poverty and despair through education, not by claiming victimhood. He continues to speak about it.

Mr. Cosby toured four schools with former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who is running for mayor. But instead of talking politics, Mr. Cosby stuck to his no-nonsense message to inner-city black children that at times has made him the target of criticism.

"Study. That's all. It's not tough. You're not picking cotton. You're not picking up the trash. You're not washing windows. You sit down. You read. You develop your brain," Mr. Cosby said at Fred D. Thompson Middle School, where 65 percent of the 700 students meet low-income criteria for free or reduced-price lunches.

Not only is he funny when he wants to be, but he is dead-on right when he speaking about a serious and critical matter. He puts his money and his time where his mouth is, too. Wonderfulness. :-)

Primary Dog Zoe is violently ill. She seems to have a bout of ruinous puking and diarrhea every 3-4 months since I've had her (Sep/Oct 2003). This time I think it's my fault, though.

On Friday, I had the occasion to grill up some porterhouse steaks. I kept the bones in the refrigerator, and on Sunday roasted them over the grill, then simmered them for two hours to make stock. After that, I gave one bone to each of the dogs; that was Sunday night about 10pm. They consumed the bones, plus the remaining meat and fat, and seemed OK for it.

But Monday night about 8pm, Zoe was quivering and quiet, obviously unhappy but not "saying" anything. I took her out, and massive poop ensued -- two sets, the second more volumiunous than the first. But then she seemed fine; she perked back up, started playing again. I went to bed about 11:30 and put the dogs in their kennels (lately I keep Backup Dog Wendy in her kennel overnight because she likes to start nipping at Primary Dog and me around 4:30 am, but if she's caged then she just stays asleep -- I keep Primary Dog in kennel then so Backup has company). About 2:30, Backup Wendy starts whining; after about two minutes I yell "No!" and go back to sleep; by 3:30 she's doing it again, so I go out to investigate, and poor Zoe has puked and shat in her kennel. I feel pretty guilty; I think it was the steak bone, too rich for her, that caused her grief. :-(

So now I've finished rinsing and bleaching the kennel pan, the pillow is in the wash, and Primary Dog is outside. Next thing to do is give her a bath and get all that junk off her. No bed, no sleep; no no no, bed bed bed, for Paul until the dogs are OK.

I think this article from BusinessPundit sums up my thoughts about Bush quite nicely.

I am no fan of Bush. I support stem-cell research, which he doesn't. I was against the prescription drug bill, the steel tariffs, the campaign finance reform bill, and the farm subsidy bill. While I don't think Bush is stupid, I don't think he is sharp enough to be President either. But could I vote for Kerry? I don't think so. To me it has come down to voting for the "tax and spend" Democrats or the "cut taxes and spend" Republicans. Does anyone care about shrinking the size of government? Nope. Does anyone care about introducing accountability into the public school system so that Americans don't fall behind the rest of the world? Not really (though they will both pay lip-service to it). So to me it basically boils down to the war on terror, which means as of now, Bush will get my reluctant vote.

It's no surprise that Al Qaeda and their like are successful againt nation-states. They are the very model of a spontaneously self-organizing phenomenon when it comes to asymmetrical warfare: small groups of individuals who do not necessarily take orders from a single central commander, other than a shared ideology and common goal (the destruction of the West).

(Let the rambling commence.)

Until just now, I thought it would be nearly impossible to eradicate their cancer from the world in less than 20 years; how do you fight a dispersed threat like this in anything other than an intergenerational fashion? However, I have recently realized that an emergent phenomenon must "emerge" within a context or environment; that environment can be beneficial or harmful to emergent behaviors. Change the environment, either by disruption or destruction, and the emergent behaviors must necessarily dissipate, deform, or die off -- perhaps in unexpected ways, but the behaviors cannot be expected to be the same after as they were before.

That's one way for a large centralized power to fight a dispersed threat: go after the enabling environmental factors that give rise to and support terrorist cells. On the international stage this means one thing: either a nation is with the terrorists, or it is with the U.S. fight against their evil. If a nation-state actively eradicates the cells that exist and reforms their policies to be unfriendly to emergent terrorism, that is the environmental disruption needed to be "with" the U.S.

Of course, another way to alter the environment is to destroy it -- c.f. Iraq in almost all areas except the Sunni triangle, and even that will be coming along soon. That destruction has a disruptive effect as well; you can't think that Iran and Syria are smiling -- they know we mean business, and must either be friends or foes. Look like Iran, at least, is going for "foe" status -- insh'Allah their people will rise against the mullahs to free themselves.

(Let rambling cease, for now.)

The documentation for the 2-month-old Savant2 is now online here; the old version 1 docs are still available here. Be sure to check out the upgrade notes.

Savant2 sports a powerful new form plugin that lets you build forms using only Savant2 plugin calls. In a way, it is a template-logic version of HTML_QuickForm as far as layout and presentation are concerned (but it doesn't do anything with validation or processing, c.f. my earlier comments on forms).

The Savant site is powered by YaWiki 0.17.2, a custom stylesheet, and a custom header template (in Savant2 of course :-). Soon I'll release an update to YaWiki that will allow much finer control over the Text_Wiki processing engine using groups in the Yawp config file.

If you have not heard of Savant, it's not because I haven't evangelized it at every opportunity; I bill it as "the simple and elegant alternative to Smarty." But just in case you haven't heard yet ... ;-)

Savant is a powerful but lightweight object-oriented template system for PHP.

Unlike other template systems, Savant by default does not compile your templates into PHP; instead, it uses PHP itself as its template language so you don't need to learn a new markup system.

Savant has an object-oriented system of template plugins and output filters so you can add to its behavior quickly and easily.

Savant has an extensible error handling system. While Savant uses its own minimalist error class out-of-the-box, it supports PEAR_Error and PEAR_ErrorStack. You can also add your own error classes to support your favorite framework error system. Error-handling hooks are provided in the standard Savant class.

Even though Savant does not come with one, you can write your own markup compiler and hook it into Savant. This means you can invent any markup system you like; as long as your compiler turns it into a PHP script, Savant will be able to use it. As with the error handler, you don't need to extend Savant itself to do this; compiler hooks are provided in the standard Savant class.

Savant is streams-aware and can use any stream as a template source.

Be sure to visit the Savant website for more information, including download and installation instructions, tutorials, and reference materials.