[development] Table hook idea

[Earl Miles]

Gordon Heydon wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Once drupal 6 is out I am going to be continuing my development of
> merging theme(table) to the formapi. I have gotten the #pre_render into
> the formapi so that we can generate the table from a drupal_render().

I am really against merging theme('table') and formapi for two reasons:

1) I've already written that theme('table') is harmful to themers, in 
general. I want to see less use of it, not more.

2) I feel very strongly that we do *too* much display-oriented work in 
fapi and we need to do less. We need to separate that work, not combine 
it more. Yes, we need to do it in such a way that we retain the power 
that we have, but right now we are giving the module developer power at 
the expense of the themer. This is a trend I am actively attempting to 
reverse.