Well this is a mess. I changed my smarty settings in smarty.php to include full path information.
define("SMARTY_DIR","/usr/local/home/site/httpdocs/Smarty-2.1.1/");
#
# Smarty object for processing html templates
#
$smarty = new Smarty;
$smarty->template_dir = "/usr/local/home/site/httpdocs/skin1";
$smarty->compile_dir = "/usr/local/home/site/httpdocs/templates_c";
$smarty->config_dir = "/usr/local/home/site/httpdocs/skin1";
$smarty->cache_dir = "/usr/local/home/site/httpdocs/cache";
$smarty->secure_dir = "/usr/local/home/site/httpdocs/skin1";
$smarty->debug_tpl="file:debug_templates.tpl";
Now I've got file references like:
<a href="javascript
:document.loginform.submit()"><fon t class="TableLeftElements">Log out </font>[img]/usr/local/home/site/httpdocs/skin1/images/GObouton.gif[/img]
