I am about to start a new project based on ZF, the library looks like a beast to be tamed at first sight, i still need to learn a lot about it. I was doing some preliminary investigations how to use Smarty with its Zend_View component. A lot of info on the web looks outdated, but i found a great blog here (and old version here). Jani is a young Finnish developer-jedi, and i really like his writings about ZF and templating engines, just to list a few of them:

After all, i am still not sure which way to go. Shall i force Smarty as a View extension? Shall i completely leave out View component, and use Smarty manually from the controllers? Shall i forget Smarty and stick to the default View and Layout components in ZF using the ugly php syntax?
During my investigations, i also came across the blog of Matthew Weier O’Phinney, who is an actual developer of ZF, so it might be worth keeping an eye on him:)

This is an archive post. It represents a point of view in the past. Facts might have changed, events might be interpreted differently as of today. Links might be broken.