Savant is a lightweight but powerful PHP template system which is compliant for PEAR. Unlike other PHP template systems, Savant uses PHP itself as its template language, so you also don't need to learn a new markup system.

Even though Savant is not itself a compiling system, you can write your own compiler and plug it into Savant, this means you can use any template markup system you like.

Savant Template System has an object-oriented system of template plugins and output filters, so it sports almost all of the power of Smarty with almost none of the overhead.

Why Use Savant for Templates?
- You don't need to learn a new language or markup to create a template. The template language is PHP, and the template file is a regular PHP file.
- You don't have to worry about separate directories (or permissions on those directories) for compiled template sources, because Savant is not a compiling engine (the template scripts are already written in PHP).
- Even though Savant is not itself a compiling system, you can write your own compiler and plug it into Savant; this means you can use any template markup system you like.
- The Savant source code is easy to read, understand, and extend, because it is exceptionally well-commented.
- The object-oriented plugin, filter, error, and compiler classes for Savant are easy to use, understand, and extend.
- Because your template script is a regular PHP script, you can sprinkle it with comments and use phpDocumentor to document it.