Well, generating text from attributes to pass to ad_form which then processes it is unlikely to be any faster than simply generating the form builder stuff from attributes directly the way that the CMS code does. The latter is, conceptually, less work.
In other words ...
attributes -> snippet processed by ad_form -> form builder
vs.
attributes -> form builder
should not be faster ... I think the smart CMS code probably doesn't cache, or if it does, not sufficiently and speed problems ought to be fixable.
I was planning to make it possible to call the attribute->form builder API from ad_form. For instance by adding an "-object_type foo" section, relaxing the one-form-block-only restriction so that you mix "built by hand" form bits with auto-generated form bits in the same form.
Of course the one thing the CMS stuff has going for it is that you can generate and process the form without calling ad_form at all, if that's all you need to do. Everything's there to do it automagically.
