Unless you're looking forward for a massive, giant project with 20+ developers, I'd - if I were you - would do anything including sacrificing an arm and/or a leg just to avoid Zend Framework.
- The nice option you found out might look handy - to the point where you find other 1k+ setting that just looks like a waste of time and developer effort in the library. You'll soon find yourself in the middle of Customization Ocean, overwhelmed by settings, interfaces and abstract classes.
- The documentation is not only detailed, but as a result very lengthy and complicated (similarly to the library itself). I want 3rd part classes to help me and not to get into my way.
- The most important factor was the development speed for me, obviously. Without a bunch of colleges around you, Zend Framework should be seriously considered whether to be dropped.
- There are too many people making wishes in the Zend issue tracker, too many people implementing code. To date, I've yet to see any serious vision behind those millions of lines.
My two cents really comes to down to one point: despite (or rather, because of?) it is backed by the PHP company, it is far too bloated for personal usage and small- and medium-sized projects.
My team is currently using Yii for a medium-sized project. It's not perfect either, but way more usable and developer-friendly compared to the big brother.
