This section provides a brief history of the Template Toolkit and details the primary author and numerous other people who have contributed to it.

The Template Toolkit began its life as the Text::MetaText module, originally released to CPAN around 1996. This itself was the public manifestation of an earlier template processing system I developed while working at Peritas (now Knowledge Pool - http://www.knowledgepool.com/)

Text::MetaText was the prototype - the one we always planned to throw away. It did the job well, showing us what worked and what didn't, what was good and what was bad, and gave us some ideas about what could be done better, given the chance to start again from scratch.

Some time late in 1998 I threw away the prototype and started work on the Template Toolkit. By then I was working at Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd. (http://www.cre.canon.co.uk), involved in a general research programme related to web publishing and dynamic content generation. The first alpha release was in June 1999, followed by numerous more alpha and beta releases culminating in 1.00 being released on 2nd December 1999.

A month or so later, work had begun on version 2.00. The plan was to get the template language relatively stable in version 1.00 and not worry too much about performance or other internal matters. Then, version 2.00 would follow to improve performance, clean up the architecture and fix anything that, with the benefit of hindsight, we thought could be improved. As it happens, me starting work on version 2.00 coincided with Doug Steinwand sending me his parser variant which compiled templates to Perl code, giving a major performance boost. As well as the speedups, there are a whole host of significant new features in version 2.00, and a greatly improved internal architecture. Apart from a few minor "fixups" the template directives and language have remained the same as in version 1.00

Version 2.00 was available in beta release form in July 2000, just in time for the 4th Perl Conference where version 1.00 was awarded "Best New Perl Module". After another extended beta release period, version 2.00 was released on 1st December 2000.

Many people have contributed ideas, inspiration, fixes and features to the Template Toolkit. Their efforts continue to be very much appreciated. Please let me know if you think anyone is missing from this list.

  Chuck Adams               <[email protected]>
  Stephen Adkins            <[email protected]>
  Ivan Adzhubey             <[email protected]>
  Mark Anderson             <[email protected]>
  Bradley Baetz             <[email protected]>
  Thierry-Michel Barral     <[email protected]>
  Craig Barratt             <[email protected]>
  Stas Bekman               <[email protected]>
  Tony Bowden               <[email protected]>
  Neil Bowers               <[email protected]>
  Leon Brocard              <[email protected]>  
  Lyle Brooks               <[email protected]>
  Dave Cash                 <[email protected]>
  Piers Cawley              <[email protected]>
  Darren Chamberlain        <[email protected]>
  Eric Cholet               <[email protected]>
  Dave Cross                <[email protected]>
  Chris Dean                <[email protected]>  
  Francois Desarmenien      <[email protected]>
  Horst Dumcke              <[email protected]> 
  Mark Fowler               <[email protected]>
  Michael Fowler            <[email protected]>    
  Axel Gerstmair            <[email protected]>
  Dylan William Hardison    <[email protected]>
  Perrin Harkins            <[email protected]>
  Bryce Harrington          <[email protected]>
  Dave Hodgkinson           <[email protected]>
  Harald Joerg              <[email protected]>
  Colin Johnson             <[email protected]>
  Vivek Khera               <[email protected]>
  Rafael Kitover            <[email protected]>
  Ivan Kurmanov             <http://www.ahinea.com>
  Hans von Lengerke         <[email protected]>
  Jonas Liljegren           <[email protected]>
  Simon Luff                <[email protected]>
  Paul Makepeace            <[email protected]>
  Gervase Markham           <[email protected]>
  Simon Matthews            <[email protected]>
  Robert McArthur           <[email protected]>
  Craig McLane              <[email protected]>     
  Leslie Michael Orchard    <[email protected]>
  Eugene Miretskiy          <[email protected]>
  Tatsuhiko Miyagawa        <[email protected]>
  Keith G. Murphy           <[email protected]>
  Chris Nandor              <[email protected]>
  Briac Pilpr�              <[email protected]>
  Martin Portman            <[email protected]>
  Slaven Rezic              <[email protected]>
  Christian Schaffner       <[email protected]>
  Randal L. Schwartz        <[email protected]>
  Paul Sharpe               <[email protected]>
  Ville Skytt�              <[email protected]>
  Doug Steinwand            <[email protected]>
  Michael Stevens           <[email protected]>
  Drew Taylor               <[email protected]>   
  Swen Thuemmler            <[email protected]>   
  Richard Tietjen           <[email protected]>
  Stathy G. Touloumis       <[email protected]>
  Jim Vaughan               <[email protected]> 
  Simon Wilcox              <[email protected]>
  Chris Winters             <[email protected]>

Andy Wardley <[email protected]>

http://www.andywardley.com/

Template Toolkit version 2.14, released on 04 October 2004.

  Copyright (C) 1996-2004 Andy Wardley.  All Rights Reserved.
  Copyright (C) 1998-2002 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.