A template is a bit of text that is parsed by Perl, using the Template Toolkit. Template Toolkit has support for variables, control structures, and more. It is more easily understood and edited by non-programmers than is Perl, and it is much safer than executing raw Perl code. Templates are compiled into Perl functions and the resulting compiled code is cached.
Templates are fast and convenient and easy.
Use the Template Editor via the admin menu on the site, or use template-tool on the command line. However, it is not currently used by the code. We have not entirely decided how to handle languages yet. Many things in Slash will fail if TRIM is not true, because it is expected that whitespace will be removed before and after a returned template. This will collapse whitespace between tags down to a single space, and will most likely be ideal for use in Slash, since runs of whitespace in HTML is the same as a single space, in most situations.