I would like to present my template engine, Outline, which is now nearly complete:
http://outline.mindplay.dk
Why yet another template engine? Yeah, you'd think there were enough at this point, but then you'd be wrong
I've been working with Smarty for some years now, and I've never been fully satisfied. For one, it's too big, and although it's still one of the fastest template engines for php, it's still at least five times slower than pure php templates (e.g. without an engine), which I've done for some of my own projects. For another, the syntax is far too bulky and complicated for my taste - and to dissimilar from php.
Outline implements, in under 1000 lines of code, all of the usual stuff like commands, blocks, modifiers, compiled templates, multi-level caching and so on. Unlike these engines, it makes no attempts to implement template security, and it does not validate the parts of the syntax that it borrows from php - which is a lot.
You can examine the syntax here:
http://code.google.com/p/php-outline/wiki/Syntax
Please examine it, if you're interested, and post your feedback, ideas, comments! thanks!