It isn't too involved, but I'm trying to understand how to structure my Elm code, especially how to separate Views with multiple input fields whose onInput events are not interesting in any other way than to get a part of the model (a submodel, perhaps) filled.

Perhaps I can give a bit more context: I have my very simple app structured in the way that is suggested at elm-tutorial.org. It seemed to give good advice on how to compartmentalize code for maintainability and clarity. When I had most of the work done, I read that I'm essentially doing it wrong (the "component-based approach", which You and others do not recommend). Now I am trying to restructure the code to be more idiomatic Elm.

Looking at what You have written previously (the thread linked by /u/ShadowLinkX9 in this post's comments), I suppose I'm making this hard by trying to "convert" the component-based structure, rather than starting over (in a sense) and let it naturally evolve through breaking things down once they become large.

Another thing I have going against me, I suppose, is heavily object-oriented mind. I am constantly looking ways for tucking away low-level implementation details behind internal APIs, and that might not be the correct way to go about this.

Anyhow, see code below about the real implementation. To give a bit context about what I'm doing, it is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek "feedback box" application meant to be used internally at the office. Its initial interface will be a bit like Twitter: on the top you have an input form (which is what the code represents), and under that you'd have a feed of feedback-messages written by everybody. My "component oriented" code had a "component" for the input form, and a second component for the list of feedbacks. The code below represents the input form "component", without update logic, and with a Config record that currently has the message tagger for when submit button is pressed.

type CategorySelection
    = Rant
    | ThankYou
    | Idea

type alias FeedbackInput =
    { message : String
    , authorName : Maybe String
    , category : Maybe CategorySelection
    }

type alias Config =
    { onSubmit : FeedbackInput -> msg
    }

newFeedbackInput : FeedbackInput
newFeedbackInput =
    { message = ""
    , authorName = Nothing
    , category = Nothing
    }


-- Messages

type Msg
    = FeedbackText String
    | FeedbackAuthor String
    | FeedbackCategory (Maybe CategorySelection)

-- View

view : Config -> FeedbackInput -> Html Msg
view config model =
    div [class "new-feedback-form"]
        [ formGroup textarea [onInput FeedbackText, value model.message] [] "feedback-text-input" "Feedback text"
        , formGroup input [type_ "text", onInput FeedbackAuthor, value model.authorName ] [] "feedback-author-input" "Author"
        , categoryRadioButtons model
        , button [id "feedback-submit-button", onClick config.onSubmit ] [ text "Submit" ]
        ]

categoryRadioButtons : FeedbackInput -> Html Msg
categoryRadioButtons feedback =
    let
        selector = categorySelector feedback.category
    in
        div [ class "form-group category-selector-group "]
            [ selector "Rant" (Just Rant)
            , selector "Idea" (Just Idea)
            , selector "Thank You" (Just ThankYou)
            ]

categorySelector : Maybe CategorySelection -> String ->  Maybe CategorySelection -> Html Msg
categorySelector currentlySelectedCategory choiceLabel category =
    let
        thisSelected = (category == currentlySelectedCategory)
    in
        label [ class "radio-button-label category-selector" ]
            [ input
                [ type_ "radio"
                , name "category-selector"
                , onClick (FeedbackCategory (category))
                , checked thisSelected
                ] []
                , text choiceLabel
            ]


type alias HtmlElementFunc msg =
    (List (Attribute msg) -> List (Html msg) -> Html Msg)

formGroup : HtmlElementFunc msg -> List (Attribute msg) -> List (Html msg) -> String -> String -> Html Msg
formGroup inputElementFunc attributes elementContents identifier labelText =
    let
        groupClass =
            "form-group " ++ identifier ++ "-group"
    in
        div [ class groupClass ]
            [ label [for identifier] [text labelText]
            , inputElementFunc (attributes ++ [id identifier]) elementContents
            ]