The template engine is a compiling engine, all templates are compiled into PHP-files. This will make the delivery of the files faster on the next request, since the template doesn't need to be compiled again. If the template changes it will be recompiled. There is no new template language to learn. Beside the default mode, there is a set of constructs since version 1.6 which allow you to edit your templates with WYSIWYG editors. By default the template engine uses indention for building blocks (you can turn that off). This feature was inspired by Python and by the need I felt to force myself to write proper HTML-code, using proper indentions, to make the code better readable.
The full documentation in pdf, html and other formats is available here