title: Form doesn't have access to its values. Is this normal?
body: <p>This is the first time I notice this and it's surprised me a bit. </p>
  
  <p>I have a zend_form with a simple text element. </p>
  
  <pre><code>$name = new Zend_Form_Element_Text('name');
  $name-&gt;setLabel('Name');
  $this-&gt;addElement($name);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The strange thing is that when I submit the form and try to read the value in the form itself (I'm doing some debugging there not in the controller), <code>$name-&gt;getValue()</code> doesn't work but the direct $_POST works. </p>
  
  <pre><code>echo $name-&gt;getValue(); //gives blank
  echo $_POST['name'];    //gives the right value
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is this normal? How does the form not have its values? I thought it's better to read them with $field->getValue() than to access the $_POST values directly. </p>
  
  <p>The second question is, to read the value in the form, is there a better way than accessing directly from $_POST?</p>