PHP Template Global Variables

Hi All,

Apologies for cross-posting, but I wanted to get feedback both from
the Bricolage camp and from the PHP camp.

Right now, the Bricolage PHP burner sets up a single global variable,
$BRIC. In it, you can access the typical Bricolage templating objects:

<?= $BRIC['story']->get_title() ?>

However, in Mason and Template Toolkit templates, you can access
these things directly:

<% $story->get_title %>
[% story.get_title %]

Now, the reason these variables ($story, $element, and $burner) are
stored in $BRIC is because, as George told me, sticking stuff into
the PHP global namespace is considered bad manners. Well, it's also
bad manners in Mason, but I'm starting to lean toward moving these
variables directly into the PHP namespace for consistency with the
Mason and TT burners, as well as for simpler code:

<?= $story->get_title() ?>

Since the Bricolage templates are a relatively controlled
environment, I'm personally not too worried about the pollution. But
what do you think?

One wrinkle: code evaluated from the PERL_LOADER directive currently
can export symbols into the namespace used by the Mason and TT
templates. For example, if I have

PERL_LOADER = use HTML::Entities;

Then I can use the exported encode_entities() function directly in
the Mason or TT templates:

<% encode_entities($story->get_title) %>
[% encode_entities(story.get_title) %]

I'd like to do this in the PHP templates, too, but this also means
that more stuff will be stuck into the global namespace:

<?= encode_entities($BRIC['story']->get_title()) ?>

So getting rid of $BRIC[] and just using $story, $element, and
$burner directly goes right along with that:

<?= encode_entities($story->get_title()) ?>

Granted, HTML::Entities is not a great example (I know that PHP has
its own functions for that), but there are other useful things
exported by PERL_LOADER code, such as burner constants. So consider
it a given that Bricolage will be putting PERL_LOADER exports into
the PHP namespace.

Anyway, your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Many TIA,

David