If one opens the template in an editor, the editor is interpreting the <> tags. The consequence is that e.g. in <body bgcolor=<TMPL_VAR name="color"> link=<TMPL_VAR name="link">> the first occurrence of > is closing the body-tag and the rest is interpreted as text showing on the screen something like: link= >>. This makes it not very convenient to edit the templates separate for layout.
Using e.g. <body bgcolor={TMPL_VAR name="color"} link={TMPL_VAR name="link"}> comes with the correct result when opening the template directly.
Is there a way to use { } (or something else) as tag instead of < > for the template variables?
