The main issue is this: You already have several and potentially many large forms that are already (or must be) formatted nicely within tables in a potentially irregular layout. It is difficult to generate the layout automatically in PHP, at least I think so given my current knowledge of PHP (maybe templating helps). Further, the forms can be designed by some HTML/graphics person that knows nothing of php. Having to go through each form and fill in the value field is anoying, maybe I'm just too lazy!
I figure I can instead have a generic template that can include and populate any form, heck, the form name itselft can also be a dynamic entity passed in the request:
<?php
...scpeial code to populate form....
include($_REQUEST['query_form_filename']);
?>
I suppose its a hack, and the better way is to scrap the original forms and generate them dynamically, or fill in the value fileds, as everyone suggests...but hey, I'm all for hacks
...and I'm still not sure how I would consolidate the layout in the latter!
Cheers,
Saul.