I too find the default decorators to be a massive pain. I understand why they are the way they are, but I think the 'inconvenience factor' has been grossly underestimated.
I have been using as many Zend components as possible over the past 10 months, on a large project, and Zend_Form has been the biggest pain in the ***. The forms are slow to render, and hard to make pretty. Don't even get me started on Sub-Forms.
I saw an interesting article called "scaling zend_form" but it didn't seem to help much with render speed :(.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.