Smarty 3. Is anyone using it with XC?
 

X-Cart v4.4.4 is still using Smarty 2.6.26 (from June 2009). In 2011 Smarty released a new powerful version of Smarty. The latest version in this moment is 3.1.17.

Smarty v3 is native working only with PHP5, completely different than v2. {php} tag is disable by default. One thing I like is the speed in template compiling. They said is around 2x - 5x. I spent time with it and I can confirm it is faster than v2.

Is it so hard making X-Cart v4.4.4 of future versions compatible with Smarty v3? Did anyone try this?