[TYPO3-ect] Again: Forms library

[Elmar Hinz]

> 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.

Yes, formidable looks like a fullblown solution and well documented in the
wiki. Personally I don't gain much, to write the same amount of XML as I
would have to write for the XHTML form. The advantage is, that it can be
transformed to something different in future. 

> But as i look at this there seems not to exist a real solution that could
> be used.
> 
> From theory it is a simple, a form has some objects and they have to be
> collected and rendered.
> The more complicate is the layout of forms. Ok, a template could do the
> job. Might become complicate if it should have columns.

With a template like smarty you could set up every format you like and still
use objects to get the complex inputs. But for the everyday form you would
go with autogeneration.

> Than there is a validation.

Validation could be completely separted. The form just needs some
placeholders for the error feedback.

> 
> In my current projects i have to build forms day by day, so i know that
> forms are an important part of any website and i hate it when i have to
> write form templates again and again.

Everybody starts to write his personal libs. The wheel is reinvented day by
day.

> Using a "form engine" would help a lot, but i don't know really, if it is
> really a time saving to configure the objects - or writing plain html.

Writing plain html is much more efficiant than using a bad form engine. But
the success of the kickstarter teaches, that a good form engine would be
welcome, because it generates the difficult parts like multiselects and
proper parameters for you.

> 
> May be forms are such uninteresting that so less people tried to make a
> right framework for forms, i don't know. Anyway imho a form engine is part

As you say, it's the day by day work of thousands of coders worldwide. I
would expect hundreds of good form engines availble for PHP.

> of a good framework and a real need. So i hope that there will be a
> development in this direction, unfortunally i have to less time to be part
> of.
> 
> vg  Steffen

Regards

Elmar