Apologies if this is a duplicate...
Based upon the work done by quickstetch's options_element project, I created a patch for D7. This patch adds a new form element, 'options', and a host of helper functions.
This patch seems to work okay, though I haven't changed any parts of core to take advantage of the functionality yet. Left todo are:
1) Find places in core to use this
2) Figure out where to put the css file (currently it's added to /misc/ directory along with the js file)
3) Write tests
For reference, see:
#740396: Core patch?
http://drupal.org/project/options_element
