+$tt_vars{make_search_url} = sub { return &Packages::CGI::make_search_url(@_) };
+$tt_vars{make_url} = sub { return &Packages::CGI::make_url(@_) };
+$tt_vars{g} = sub { return &Packages::I18N::Locale::tt_gettext(@_) };
+# needed to work around the limitations of the the FILTER syntax
+$tt_vars{html_encode} = sub { return HTML::Entities::encode_entities(@_,'<>&"') };
+$tt_vars{uri_escape} = sub { return URI::Escape::uri_escape(@_) };
+$tt_vars{quotemeta} = sub { return quotemeta($_[0]) };
+
+my $template = new Packages::Template( "$TOPDIR/templates", 'html', \%tt_vars );