Why is INPUT such a Rube Goldberg?

[acmeanvil]

Thanks for the reply Tim,
I think you beat my reply to Han in.
Yes, INPUT builder does sound great!

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing more rewarding than actually getting all the braces in the correct place and having it run perfectly. I do like having the ability to make INPUT do exactly what I would like in a single statement, even though it has a habit of frustrating me.

From the looks of it you guys have spent plenty of time going over what is possible/useful/necessary when putting PPL together, with the result being a very good tool IMHO.

To your question about what overlap, (it's mostly ideal speculation, but fun though...) I would envision the current INPUT would be broken into its parts, so INPUT (for lack of a better name..) would become a function(container?) for creation of input boxes only, CHKBOX for check boxes, DROPDOWN for drop down boxes, etc. INPUT_GROUP() would be roughly analogous to the current INPUT(), in the sense that it uses the separate elements above to create an input page. However it would be more of a canvas on to which the elements could be positioned. Screen position, background color,etc for each element would be part of the INPUT_GROUP syntax. So your input box would be: define the elements->place in an input group->run the group.

Also, something like a CONDITIONAL_DROPDOWN with content based on the output a previous set of check boxes on the same page would great.......

Anyway, still all ideal speculation though.