Smarty like templates?

[eluser]sophistry[/eluser]
agreed yield can be confusing to grasp at first - it is basically string replacement like you outlined above, but the PHP internals are not embedded in the view file.

you can put PHP in a view, but the typical way of deciding how to structure code in there is to imagine a 'designer' working with your view files. now, you may or may not be working with designers but in any case it is a good way to help decide where to put functional code versus display code.

cheers.