If there’s anybody out there like me, they’ll understand my plight. I take things apart. A lot. I end up with a collection of components using flat-flex connectors, and the only way I’ve found to use these is to take precious flat flex that happens to be lying around, cut it carefully into it’s individual wires up an inch or two from the end, and solder it to a vectorboard next to a row of male headers.
How about a breakout board like ones for other ribbon connectors, but make it wide enough for a really wide zif (or lif) flat flex socket, and just let us line up smaller strips against one side, or just make it wide enough to accept most widths of sockets, and allow the purchaser to install his or her own socket.
Here’s a larger version, for a different kind of cable, but the principle is the same. I’d suggest removing the screw terminals on the side, and adding a row of holes on the edge for us to attach our own headers, male or female, to the board. http://www.winford.com/products/pic/brk … _large.jpg
Who knows, it might even come with that oh-so-seductive sneaky footprint design for headers (loved that, and I still don’t know why it hasn’t caught on).