[Adrian Schneider]

Why not just use plugins to accomplish most of the processing, so you can keep the templates nice and simple?

@Hellcat: You really shouldn't use PHP like that in templates. Though it works, it defeats the whole purpose of the template system. Someone editing it will most likely remove the empty conditions and break the script without knowing what happened to it.

@libertate: your syntax is a little off:

<if condition="YOUR_CONDITION">
    show this if YOUR_CONDITION is true 
<else /> 
    Show this if YOUR_CONDITION is false.
</if>

Note that the <else /> is optional.

Anyway, both of our examples do the same thing (alternate between true/false of the condition), so what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?