Having just recently gone back and TT-ified a report generator (that in 20/20 hindsight probably should have started with a template :) I'd offer at least this advice:

If you do use here-docs and/or qq{} try and make as much effort as possible not to interleave any computation or manipulation in with the printing. That way in n months when you do break down and bite the bullet (because after the xth request to add just one more thing . . .; oh, and we want a Blackberry friendly version of the same information so you need to make another copy aimed at a 2" wide screeen but the BB browser is dane bramaged enough to not understand sufficient CSS to do it that way) you don't have to spend a bunch of time extracting that logic and moving it elsewhere.

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

In reply to Re: templates vs here docs by Fletch
in thread templates vs here docs by grashoper

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.