staticOptions - setting defaults for various classes...

Ive been a busy bee, building a whole app, attempting to use as many pear classes as possible.. one of the things that appears to be missing is a way to set the default options on various classes an example would be: Mail: default factory method/host etc. HTML_Quickforms_date: date format and range.. I'm sure there are a few more classes that take options of some sort for class initiation that could do with a 'site-wide' mechanism of pre-setting the defaults.., the mechanism below is what I have ended up using for DB_DataObject, at the application start point.. require_once('DB/DataObject.php'); require_once('Mail.php'); require_once('HTML_QuickForms_date'); $config = parse_ini_file('myconfig.ini'); DB_DataObject::staticOptions($config['DB_DataObject']); Mail::staticOptions($config['Mail']); HTML_QuickForms_date::staticOptions($config['HTML_QuickForms_date']); obviously this could be done using the Config class as well, using $config->getValues('/DB/DataObject'); as well.. or any other method that the user prefers.... the staticOptions method looks like this.. /** * Get/Set the Options using array or object * * to fetch: use $options = &DB_DataObject::staticOptions(); * to set DB_DataObject::staticOptions(); * or DB_DataObject::staticOptions(array('database'=>'mysql.....')); * @param object Config (Optional) or string ('realm') * @param array Options

   * @access     public
   * @return     array Options

*/ function &staticOptions() {

       static $options = array();
       if ($args = &func_get_args()) {
           $options = $args[0];
       }
       return $options;

} for something like HTML_QuickForms_date the change would look something like this.. Function HTML_QuickForm_date ($elementName, $value=null, $new_options=array()) { $options = HTML_QuickForm_date::staticOptions(); // copy not reference

        foreach ($new_options as $k=>$v) {

$options[$k] = $v;

        }
       HTML_QuickForm_element::HTML_QuickForm_element($options);

......... Anyway - anybody got any thoughts on this?? regards alan