In a new blog entry, Pádraic Brady (and fellow developers) start off their look at the Zend Framework. They begin with a foundation structure (Java BluePrints Pet Shop for J2EE's example) and work up from there to develop their own application. Unfortunately, when they get to the Views of the app, things get a little tricky:

Back on track, the main problem of a complex View, is that the current Controller is only aware of a subset of its own required Model (data) and the current View. So how do do you get the View to include extra sections - for example, details from Technorati for your blog - which are common to ALL pages?

The framework's documentationComposite View and View Helper combination, to accomplish the "reusable page bits" they need.