Unexpected behavior with page-specific Smarty data [SOLVED]

[mr_compsci]

I wrestled with this for a while today and finally found the answer in the 1.4.0 changelog:

* A new text area in the options tab of content pages allows specifying page specific data (as opposed to putting page specific data into the metadata section of the page)
* A new plugin {process_pagedata} processes the page specific data through smarty.  It should be at the very top of all page templates

The key is to add {process_pagedata} at the top of the template.

[Dr.CSS]

Adding this to the page metadata is OK and this feature will not be removed from future ves. of CMS Made Simple...