Moving to something like Handlebars (after 2.1)

[Diego Andrés]

You know, I kinda wonder where are all those noisy themers who were very vocal about how terrible SMF themming system is and how much weight we gave to backend instead of frontend...  here we are, a few years later actually defending their case 

Would be nice to meet them since I got started in css and php making themes, at it was very easy.

[All Colours Sam]

Speaking of template systems I've recently been toying and very much likening EJS and Erubis

Of course if we took this further I very much like the way Vue is heading.

[landyvlad]

While a bit of the stuff in this thread is above my head / knowledge I entirely agree with this statement

Anything that makes things easier for the end user gets my vote.  If that means being able to modify the looks, build themes without having to learn php can only be a good thing.

Of course (IMHO) the best means would be a graphical front end where you can make changes and then review them in near real-time such as in wordpress. Heaps good, and probably almost impossible to achieve.  Such a thing, were it offered by any forum software, would drag many new users away from SMF (and  others) in droves.

Why new users? Well I think many are initially far more concerned with looks rather than function.

[Gwenwyfar]

This is not a feature to help (or that would truly help) users/admins. It would "help" those making the themes, two very different things. If the subject is making things easier for admins/users there's other things that would be much more useful and would not even involve changing how the templates work. Your graphical interface example is one such thing, it would be a nice feature.

[Arantor]

The thing about Handlebars is that it strongly encourages splitting templates into small pieces and including them.

Means admins can find things easier as to changing them. At least that's been our experience having now converted the entirety of the templates.