I found some time in the last weeks to reconsider Zend Framework, this time in the 1.5 version, for this blog software and rewrote all Forms using the new Zend_Form component. I have to say, i love it. Its very easy using the already existing Zend_Validate and Zend_Filter components as input for the generated form fields. Another plus is the handling of errors in input and re-entering/displaying text.
There is also a neat feature of the Zend_Form component, which allows to generate complete forms by passing an appropriately formatted Zend\_Config\_Ini object to the Zend\_Form Constructor. So my idea was, why not program an Eclipse Plugin allowing to rapidly generate and edit forms using a point-and-click plugin window approach, which would ultimately generate your Form INI code.
This might have been a great Google Summer of Code idea for the Eclipse Foundation (since Zend is not taking part).