[TYPO3-ect] Again: Forms library

[Steffen Kamper]

Hi Elmar,

"Elmar Hinz" <elmar07 at googlemail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:mailman.1.1193068097.11943.typo3-team-extension-coordination at lists.netfielders.de...
> Hello,
>
> time to reopen this theme.
>
> Do you sometimes wonder, why there isn't a really good forms library
> available for PHP, although PHP is that many years old by now? I often do.
>
> Google.com gives me an ECTs wiki page as 5th result for the search "php
> forms library". No joke. That is funny and sad at the same time. Other
> languages overtake right and left. Just think of the modern JavaScript
> frameworks.
>
> Is it that difficult to write a forms library? I don't think so. Kasper
> wrote 2 of them. One for the BE, the TCE Forms, but they are not usable 
> for
> FE plugins. The second, the TS forms, are for the FE, but they are not
> object orientated, so that the are unflexible in the field of plugin
> development.
>
> The core team modernizes the forms element by now. Who knows details? Will
> it be object orientated?
>
> I meanwhile have made up my own vision of a forms library. It  should be
> useful inside and outside TYPO3. There would be an object tree that
> represents the forms structure and data, but no rendering data at all. The
> rendering would be the task of independent renderers. (It could be
> orientated on the XFORMS specification).
>
> Because it doesn't contain rendering informations, it is rather simple to
> code. The second advantage is, that you could choice between different
> tools, to output the form to differnt formats.
>
> Also the construction would be simple. It would be generated from a
> typoScript or XML setup. Finally the population with data is straight 
> away.
> The data finds it's places by the name/id that every form element has. You
> don't have to fiddle with the structure of the tree at all. It would 
> simply
> take an array or object like piVars.
>
> To summarize:
>
> The usage has three steps:
>
> 1.) Automatic tree object tree creation:
>
>  From a setup with TS or XML or PHP array. Could evalute the TCA.
>  It's a real object tree that can be extended, processed etc.
>
> 2.) Populating the tree with data:
>
>  Array or object with id/names as index.
>
> 3.) Rendering the tree to output:
>
>   Could be simply rendered to a form as a whole.
>   Could be placed piecewise by ids into templates like smarty.
>
> What do you think about? Does anybody take up the spark to light a 
> firework?
>
> Regards
>
> Elmar
>

this seems to be a never ending story :-)
I know that some working on a form wizard for 4.2. I know that formidable 
does something.
But as i look at this there seems not to exist a real solution that could be 
used.