From a suggestion by C. Weiske on irc://irc.freenode.net/php-gtk :

• first idea: use the DOM of the Glade file and a XPath selection on nodes to iterate on the Glade model and create variables from the results
• better idea: use

  __get

  in a class to create the members as needed, like

  $this->glade->get_widget_from_id($widgetname)

  • __get is defined at http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.overloading.php

• For programs needing work being done behind the scenes, without freezing the UI, using an idle-directe finite state machine can be done with the OSInet FSM

• structured logging
  • log_source/log_sink interfaces
  • switchable backends: file, console, syslog, gtk label…
• chrono class:
  • start
  • stop
  • lap (time)
  • implements log_source