In current implementation when creating lets say SELECT element, we need to pass the options as 'val'=>'text', with that approache we face a problem when we want to assign integer value to option. With current zend_config we would need to have in XML something like <1>type11>, this is illegal in xml - so we cant assign integer values to options, and i think that is the most common use case for select elements ( database normalization for inserting values etc. ).

I would suggest we have something that could accept a format like

 
array(1) {
  ["multiOptions"]=>
  array(3) {
    [0]=>
    array(2) {
      ["val"]=>
      string(1) "1"
      ["key"]=>
      string(2) "aa"
    }
    [1]=>
    array(2) {
      ["key"]=>
      string(1) "2"
      ["val"]=>
      string(4) "xxxx"
    }
    [2]=>
    array(2) {
      ["val"]=>
      string(3) "444"
      ["key"]=>
      string(4) "ssss"
    }
  }
}

That way we can store our configuration in XML and generate options with text values as well.