Question

it seems that the :controller option doesn’t do anything? Won’t specifying the whole path be a little bit lower level than specifying using :controller?

Answer 1

To my knowledge, i checked the documentation, there is no :controller option, and i think it is just ignored.

Also, i believe it is a shorter notation. If you compare

:template => 'controller/action'

with

:controller => 'controller', :action => 'action'

It is pretty obvious (at least to me) that it has the same meaning.
Also, this is more generic, because sometimes controllers (and views) are nested.