[development] CVS HEAD, code freeze, zeitgeist

[Jeff Eaton]

> From: Mark Fredrickson [mailto:mark.m.fredrickson at gmail.com] 
> The big problem that I see with CCK right now is that it ties 
> a lot of the logic into the form submission process. This is 
> similar to the problems we've seen with programmatically 
> creating nodes. This is a problem for the immediate need of 
> allowing modules to define and import their own content types 
> (a la views). It is also a problem for long term maintenence. 
> There are at least three ways to create a field, all of them 
> tied to a different form. If the data storage mechanism 
> changes (again) that requires picking through three different 
> areas of the code, trying to synchronize the changes.

Just a quick note that http://drupal.org/node/77919 is a patch that
allows programmatic submission of forms without any user interaction.
Get a form array, populate the form values, and process it -- the same
validate, submit, and so on calls are executed.

That won't solve problems that arise from a lack of clean API, but it
WILL make scripting/automating processes that require form interaction
much more straightforward in 4.8/5.0.

--Jeff