pytrin wrote:even though I still consider Zend just a class library
Not sure why you would say that, it has a complete stack as well as components. It's just not as locked in (baked?) as CakePHP and similar frameworks, which in my opinion is its strength
That's exactly why I would say that

It is a full stack, but is just a collection of classes that you glue together to create your application, whereas Cake glues this stuff together into a MVC framework from which to build MVC applications. It's a strength in your opinion because you probably prefer to develop that way, using professional classes and gluing them together yourself into an MVC application or some other way. I prefer my framework to do the heavy lifting, even if I need to follow some conventions, and I concentrate on the business logic and display.
I've been doing PHP for quite a while, as I'm sure you have, and other than posting in forums and mailing lists, I prefer not to produce much code

I definitely don't like including classes and/or instantiating objects, bootstrapping, routing, etc. the same way every time I write an application just to get the core functionality of MVC and ORM. I'm sure that many that use Zend have built their own skeleton application that they use each time and I probably would use Zend if I took the time to do that as well.
So in short, to each his own. My point was that, as good, flexible and plentiful as they are, the classes in Zend are just that, a library of classes. This appeals to many as a framework, just not me.