Hi Peter,

First of all, thanks for your feedback.

Actually, I'm just implementing a Facade Pattern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facade_pattern), encapsulating all the view environment, without affecting the subsystem functionality. If I change the Zend_Controller, I would have to change existing code and probably change existent functionality. In addition, if the Zend_Controller holds the ability to directly handle the view environment, then you would be able to handle the view environment only there or writing action plugins for this.

What I want with this proposal is to provide a simpler interface to handle the view environment anywhere (especially in the bootstrap) and keep these settings in the whole application's life-cycle.

Hi Oscar,

Thanks for your feedback.
Yes, you're right. Maybe the name is not accomplishing the exactly goal for this component. But once it's going to handle the view AND layout objects, and also its helpers, so I'm not sure which name would be better. I've choosen Template because you can use it in combination with a template engine, but, as you said, it's not a template engine, it's only a handler for this.
Any suggestions?

Hello Michael,

Thanks for your feedback.

Actually, it's not exactly like that.

For example, when I mean change the default template, I don't mean change the default layout (what's currently supported), but the whole view environment (client side scripts, style sheets, view scripts, layout scripts).
Again, change the default template in use at anytime is not implemented also if we consider the above.
Enable and disable layout ok, it's already implemented, but you also have the option to disable the whole rendering process, without having to remove the view renderer helper, disable the layout and so on. You simply call Zend_Template::getInstance()->disableRendering() or to simply disable the layout in use, you can disable the layout the way you want (using Zend_Template or directly using Zend_Layout, once both are singleton objects it will have the same effect).
Basically, Zend_Template would be supposed to make easier to change the view environment at runtime, without having to access more than a single object to achieve this.
For example, I have an application that has different client interfaces, one for web, one for blackberry, one for iphone and a general one for all other smart devices and each one has their own particularities and functionalities. I can change the whole view environment to each one easily accessing this single object, without having to write more than a single line of code to do that.
Also, I could have an application with lots of different skins and the skin could be choose by the user. And also these skins could be developed by third party and submitted to the application to be used by the users dynamically.
Or a simple interface, without a rich css and javascript implementation and another one with lots of css resources, flash and ajax features, etc.
I'm still thinking that a single object would make all this job much easier than it currently is.
Two new features I've added in my test version are:
Now, I can set the encoding and spread it along the application.
Now, I can set the virtual address to my static files, like images, client scripts and style sheets.
I also have a helper to manipulate the Zend_Template object now, so I can use it on my views simply using $this->template(). It's a read only based helper, so it's supposed just to retrieve information that concerns to the view to be retrieved.