Drupal 7 Module Development

Theming a Module
}
// Load the account object with the node's creator and store
// in a variable for themer convenience.
$variables['user'] = user_load($node->uid);
// Theme the username.
$variables['name'] = theme('username', array(
'account' => $variables['user']));
Template files
In order to make template files as easy to understand by non-programmers, the
template should be limited to the following PHP statements:
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The print and if/elseif/else PHP snippets should be self-explanatory. However,
it's important to reiterate that, in order to make Drupal multi-lingual, we should
never include a bare English word in our templates; instead we should use t() in a
snippet.
Lastly, the show(), hide(), and render() functions are special themer-convenience
functions that should only be used in template files; they should never be used in
preprocess functions, theme functions or anywhere else. render() is basically the
same thing as the drupal_render() function we've already learned about. The
hide() function can be used on a render array's child element earlier in the template
before the render array calls render(); this will prevent the child element from
being included with the rest of the render array when it is rendered. For example
(from Bartik's node.tpl.php):