The Template parser in ExpressionEngine reminds of the boat trip in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where the visitors are taken on a rather wild ride with no sure knowledge of their destination, yet traveling via a liquid chocolate medium. Hm, this analogy is starting to lose cohesion, but my point is that the Template parser takes the incoming URL and flies around figuring out the template to use, parses its various components (tags for plugins and modules, variables, conditionals, variables in tags, global variables, segments, everlasting gobstoppers, et cetera), checks for caching, sends data to various files, replaces EE code with data, looks for additional embedded templates, and finally ends up with a completely rendered page. And, it works. It all somehow works.
Whenever we change the Template parser, our hands get a little sweaty and you can notice little ticks developing. The Template parser is the brain of the entire program. You start operating on that and one little slip could have ExpressionEngine developing its own curious ticks. For ExpressionEngine 1.4, Rick and I have modified and added code for new functionality in both the Weblog module and conditionals, which are possibly the two most important things used in templates. These two things combined with the including of Extensions had us considering naming this coming version 2.0 instead of 1.4. I argued against though because I expect us to have even more to show for that version, and so we are definitely setting a very high bar for 2.0 now. At least one developer committed to the asylum or bust!
