JZForm is a side project I've been working on. Its aim is to provide a DSL for html forms and input in general. After a week of picking at it I'm setting it aside again because it is sapping my energy without showing much progress. The problem is, I really don't know what I want. I have some general ideas, but the API continues to be overly complex while the output is too amorphous to provide a clear path forward.

Part of this is my inexperience designing tools of this type. I really enjoy the clean easy to use API's of Datamapper and Merb. Even jQuery which has to fight through JavaScript's more noisy syntax has a clear consistent interface. I want to build something similar for building forms, but I'm not sure what would make a good API. It's like beauty, I'll know it when I see it.

Another problem is not having built enough forms by hand. I really dislike the process -- part of the reason for JZForms was to abstract out and automate it. On the other hand without a little bit more blue-water experience, I end up trying to automate a process I don't really understand.

So, for the moment, JZForms will remains a fossil on my GitHub account. This week instead I am going to work on a minigame I've designated 'ucw' which pulls together several of the basic concepts of AntaresTrader and is designed from the ground up to have a web front end. In other words there might be something to show off, and I can ge some practice building and validating forms (<sarcasm> you just see my excitement about that</sarcasm>).

I also am going to start work on adding feedback mechanisms to this blog. Comments and the like were initially not high on the list of things to do, but they have been pushed up by popular demand. (Well actually a very few demands by some very popular people).

Finally, I have a few new Game Reviews in the hopper that are waiting for me to finish out a series I'm writing on how games function and what makes them fun. Look for some game related posts coming up.

Alright, the longer I plan, the less I have time to do stuff today.