Comments for The view from Black Mesa

Comment on Another example of XForms by The view from Black Mesa : An XForms case study, part 1 (look and feel)

The view from Black Mesa : An XForms case study, part 1 (look and feel) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:43:37 +0000

[...] a previous post, I mentioned the evaluation forms we put together for the Balisage conference last year, using [...]

Comment on Another example of XForms by John Cowan

John Cowan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:25:18 +0000

To be fair, Turing-completeness doesn’t relate to I/O, which is mostly what XForms is about. JavaScript implementations can’t read from punched paper tape, and it’s possible that an in-browser XForms system could have widgets not exposed via JavaScript.

Comment on Why do some XML-oriented users avoid Cocoon 2.2? by Con

Con — Mon, 30 May 2011 01:12:20 +0000

Following up on this post very belatedly, I’ve had exactly the same experience myself with Cocoon. Recently I’ve been using XML Calabash for certain kinds of things I would once have done in Cocoon, and toying with the idea of wrapping it in a Servlet, to push it further into that space.

Comment on Bilingualism as a specification tool by John Cowan

John Cowan — Tue, 17 May 2011 02:56:45 +0000

We discussed this in 2009.

Comment on XForms course 16-17 June 2011, San Carlos, California by Simon Dunton

Simon Dunton — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:54:47 +0000

There’d be a lot of point in my sending one of my team on your course, but San Carlos really is a long way for two days. Have you thought about holding the course at a European venue at all? (London would be particularly handy!)

Comment on XForms class 14-15 February 2011, Rockville, Maryland by The view from Black Mesa : XForms course 16-17 June 2011, San Carlos, California

The view from Black Mesa : XForms course 16-17 June 2011, San Carlos, California — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:15:42 +0000

[...] iterations of the course. And the rationale for XForms, as I understand it, remains as described in an earlier post to this blog; the course is directed to users of XML who want to use XForms to work with XML [...]

Comment on XForms class 14-15 February 2011, Rockville, Maryland by Joe Wicentowski

Joe Wicentowski — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:02:27 +0000

Excellent class, Michael! Thanks so much. After several attempts to learn XForms I really feel I have a much better foundation now, and that it’s sinking in.

For an exercise I created an XQuery that takes an XML file and turns all elements and attributes into xf:inputs, so the content can be edited in the browser. Fun. The problem of course is how to handle the case of elements with mixed content (text + child elements). I’m trying to create a simple workaround as was suggested in class – flagging such cases with a warning as “to edit this, you’ll need to move to oXygen.”

I took a brief look at XTiger, while very neat, it doesn’t appear to handle mixed content at all. I’m curious to hear the XTiger devs explain the difference between their approach and XForms. Their paper (http://media.epfl.ch/Templates/Article/Article.html) merely states, “XForms’… declarative approach clearly facilitates the control of data, but unfortunately XForms is currently not supported by browsers, and thus requires the use of often complex frameworks”. If that’s the only objection to XForms, then XSLTForms might seem like a superior answer, since it doesn’t reinvent the wheel. I notice that the XTiger docs (http://media.epfl.ch/Templates/XTiger-spec-comparison.html) have a section entitled, “Comparison with other languages / approaches”, but this only contains the following:

XTiger: to be done
XSTL + XML: to be done
XFoms: to be done

One other promising project is ExtXSLTForms, created by Claudius Teodorescu. He’s creating extensions to XSLTForms that let you embed javascript-based XHTML editors in XForms textareas. One could imagine that these editors could be adapted to whatever padded cell need you have in mind. For more on ExtXSLTForms, see extxsltforms.sourceforge.net/sitKubera/index/index.xml.

Comment on XML Prague 2011 by John Cowan

John Cowan — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:18:44 +0000

I can’t be there, but I’ll have a poster on MicroXML.

Comment on Why do some XML-oriented users avoid Cocoon 2.2? by John Cowan

John Cowan — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:44:56 +0000

Hey, I didn’t know you were a Rexx maven!

I really like NetRexx, which if you don’t know about it is a dialect of Rexx that compiles into Java.

Comment on XForms class 14-15 February 2011, Rockville, Maryland by cmsmcq

cmsmcq — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:38:55 +0000

Hugh Cayless has a thoughtful blog post on interfaces and models in which he addresses issues relating to whether, and how, it's desirable to 'shield' users from seeing markup. I think his points are well taken (but every paraphrase I have formulated has oversimplified them unacceptably, so I'll stop trying and just say: if you're interested in these questions, look at what he has to say).