I've searched around this forum but not found a reference about this problem.

Problem: If you have no specials and you 'open' the page specials, there's no more the sentence 'At the moment there are no specials' or something similar.

What happens: in effect the tpl file is no more called.

Version: zen-cart-v1.3.8a-full-fileset-12112007

Checked against files directly inside the zip, without installation

Files involved:

includes/modules/pages/specials/main_template_vars.php

Code:
    }
    require($template->get_template_dir('tpl_specials_default.php',DIR_WS_TEMPLATE, $current_page_base,'templates'). '/tpl_specials_default.php');
  }
}
should become

Code:
    }
  }
  require($template->get_template_dir('tpl_specials_default.php',DIR_WS_TEMPLATE, $current_page_base,'templates'). '/tpl_specials_default.php');
}
includes/languages/english/specials.php

missing TEXT_NO_SPECIALS define

includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_specials_default.php

after
Code:
<h1 id="specialsListingHeading"><?php echo $breadcrumb->last(); ?></h1>
missing

Code:
<?php if ($num_products_count ==0) {
 echo TEXT_NO_SPECIALS; }?>

Bye