You've got it. The field types also need to match appropriately, from what I recall most of the integer fields need to be floats.
If for some reason you test and the values aren't getting written, mess around with the field types.
I agree, it would be nice to see this implemented into the core package. All of these properties are accessible via code, so these modifications could also be implemented into any custom form using vbscript or jscript.