Hello Anonymous complainer, on 11/22/2009 09:23 AM LinuxManMikeC said the following: > Just like to share my real world experience with Manuel Lemos' > "formsgeneration" library. > http://www.phpclasses.org/formsgeneration > > At work early this summer we had a project under a tight deadline that > needed unified form creation, processing, and error reporting. I had > seen Manuel promoting his formsgeneration class on the mailing list > and thought I'd look into it to help keep the project within the > deadline. I read some positive reviews and comments, the demos looked > promising, and the interface seemed good enough. Little did I know > the headaches I was in for. I found the configuration structures and > interface to be extremely cumbersome, not to mention terribly > documented. The interface seems quite inefficient and in most cases > its easier just to throw together a form and validation code by hand. > Usage was often convoluted, and due to the poor documentation I spent > half my effort trying to decipher the interface. And it was difficult > to customize in several areas. While it can work well enough in > several simple cases, in my opinion it is too cumbersome for any > significant form processing project, especially in the business world. > I ended up wasting a week of work using the formsgeneration class and > had to redo the project making my own form utility code from scratch > as I went (which took just as much time and actually worked as > intended). Granted I did make the mistake of not giving myself enough > evaluation time before the project. I just want caution others to > carefully evaluate this code before deciding to use it in their > projects, especially since Manuel seems so eager to promote his code > (and his web site) whenever the opportunity arises. And in general, > to be cautious and take your time when evaluating any 3rd party code > for production use. There seems to be a misunderstanding. I am not eager to promote my code. I just look forward to have my classes tested by as many people as possible, so I get as many bug reports and feature improvements as possible. The fact is that I developed this and many other packages for my own purposes. Nowadays I could not live without them because they make me several orders of magnitude more productive than if I had to do it edit HTML code mannually as you said you did. Anyway, maybe this surprises you, but I like criticism. Especially constructive criticisms from people that are able to give specific examples of what they do not like, instead of making vague claims as you did. I like constructive criticism because it helps me making my code better, more useful to others and ultimately to myself. That is why I publish my work as Open Source. Unfortunately you did make any constructive criticism. There seems to be no way to improve my work because you were not specific to what exactly you find cumbersome, even less what you would different to make it less cumbersome. I never claimed it would be perfect for everybody. What is good and productive for some, maybe hard and difficult for others, especially if you try to learn all by yourself and never ask for help. The class has a support forum where you can ask questions and always get a response so you never get stuck. http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/package/1/ Anyway, I don't know if you ever asked for help because you are using an anonymous identity here. Actually, I wonder why you bother to write a special message anonymously just campaign against the forms class. It makes me wonder if you have other reasons to do it that you may not be revealing unrelated with the class. Anyway, I am not upset. I am just sorry that you made many criticisms without giving real examples to demonstrate your points. That way it will not be helpful to anybody. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
