Wishlist items such as [[Add space before slash in parent links]] would be
easier to deal with if the page.tmpl template was broken up into sections
and each section had a separate template file which was included in the
master page.tmpl file.  This would make it easier to customize parts of a
page without having to fork the whole page.tmpl and then have things break
when there's an update of the master page.tmpl file.

Suggested sections:

* page_head.tmpl for the things in the <head> section
* page_header.tmpl for things in the "header" div (which includes the PARENTLINKS loop)
* page_actions.tmpl for the actions section
* page_sidebar.tmpl for the sidebar
* page_content.tmpl for the main content
* page_footer.tmpl for the footer

Would this work, or would HTML::Template have problems with this?

-- [[KathrynAndersen]]

> Well, breaking it up into 6 sections would let a user modify one of them
> with only 1/6th the chance of it being broken by a new ikiwiki.
> Which seems like a win from the user's POV. However, I know that there
> are ikiwiki users who modify the `page.tmpl` but are very
> unsophisticated; needing to find the right file amoung 6 to modify
> would be a loss for these users. And some modifications would probably
> need to be coordinated amoung multiple files.
> 
> For ikiwiki developers, reducing by 5/6th the number of users affected by a
> breaking change to page.tmpl is nice, but we still have to worry about
> the 1 in 6 that would be affected despite the splitting. Ikiwiki has
> enough users that any change to page.tmpl has to be carefully considered
> to avoid breaking something they may depend on, and it's been two years
> since that last needed to be done.
> 
> So all in all, I don't think it's worth doing. --[[Joey]] 
