how to handle lots and lots of very similar tables

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
[quote author="jedd" date="1235460528"]
Forgive my obtuseness .. and note that I've only read thru the Library part of the user_guide twice just now .. but what advantages would this have over, say, keeping this logic in a model? [/quote]

That's what you would be doing, but your model would extend the library. The library would serve almost as an abstract class. In fact, if you really wanted to, the library could be your abstract class.

[quote author="jedd" date="1235460528"]
Stupidly, I hadn't connected controller names with URI segments, but, yes, of course. <slaps forehead> I'll stick with _model suffixes then. Part of the confusion I've given myself in the past, and it's pretty arbitrary, has been with my IDE (Quanta) - as I toggle between tabbed files where the filenames in those tabs are very similar.[/quote]

I know that feeling. I used to lose track of which tab was what file all the time... I use Aptana for my IDE. Sadly, it doesn't support multiple rows of tabs like Quanta, but it does allow you to rearrange tabs (I can't remember if Quanta does or not). The beauty of this is I can arrange identically named tabs into the fairly obvious order of Model, View, then Controller. Aptana mucks this up though if you have more tabs in the tab row than you can fit. If you don't mind a little bit of slow clunkiness, I'd highly recommend Apatana. It's Java-based, which is why I think it's so slow. It's not as fast as Quanta at loading/saving files and switching tabs, but other than that, it's fantastic.