I've heard good things about patTemplate (
http://www.php-tools.de/site.php?fil...e/overview.xml) and SmartTemplate (
http://www.smartphp.net/content/smar...out/about.html)... my experience with them is limited, but I liked how "lightweight" they felt.
There is always the "easy" option of just plain PHP. TBH, 99% of the time, auto_prepend, auto_append, and a normal PHP page will do the job just as well, all without having to learn a new language. When you pick up a template package, like it or not, you are usually learning a new programming language, and I have always felt that this is simply overkill. PHP is a fine templating language, it comes with blocks, if/else structures, and everything else you could possibly need. And don't tell me that <!-- IF var -->....<!-- ENDIF --> is somehow simpler than <?php if ($var) { ?> <?php } ?>, they're essentially the same thing in the end. Skip the process of converting templates into PHP programatically and just write PHP from the start. :-/