For a strange idea, TinyButStrong is a PHP template language that works halfway between this and traditional templating: You work in an HTML template file, but

For a strange idea, TinyButStrong is a PHP template language that works halfway between this and traditional templating: You work in an HTML template file, but the engine understands the HTML structure so the values you insert are like vtpl but in reverse. It was designed to work with WYSIWIG HTML editors. Here's their example page for arrays, you can see how the template is completely valid HTML without having to make the engine render it: https://www.tinybutstrong.com/examples.php?e=dataarray&m=template https://www.tinybutstrong.com/examples.php?e=dataarray&m=tem... (then on the upper-left you can click "Result" to see how the "tr" elements, as specified in "block=tr" in the template, are duplicated for the passed-in array)