Re: A forms-lite straw man

John Boyer wrote:
> For easier reading to others, here is a repeat of what Lachlan asked:
> 
>> Having said that, though, I may be interested in merging the two in a 
>> way that doesn't involve retrofitting the syntax of one into the other. 
>>  I'm *still* waiting for John Boyer to explain his intriguing binding 
>> idea that he briefly mentioned earlier, which seemed to do just that.

Actually, the question I was referring to [1] was this:

| Are you suggesting that the XForms content could be bound to
| the input element in XBL sense (i.e. using shadow content trees,
| etc.) or that the input element in the DOM gets replaced with
| the equivalent XForms content?  If it's something completely
| different, please explain.

> It just seems to me to be easy to say something like:
> 
> <input name="Age" type="integer" ... />
> 
> is a shorthand for an implied xforms model in which the following appears:
> 
> <xf:model>
>     <xf:instance xmlns="">
>       <data>
>          ...
>          <Age>40</Age>
>          ...
>       </data>
>    </xf:instance>
> 
>    <xf:bind nodeset="Age" type="xsd:integer"/>
> </xf:model>
> 
> <xf:input ref="Age">
>    <xf:label>Age</xf:label>
> </xf:input>

I still can't can't quite grasp the concept of how this would work, how 
it would be implemented by UAs and what effect that would have upon 
existing HTML 4 forms?  I'm sure you're aware that altering the 
functionality of existing HTML 4 forms needs to be done in a way that 
will not break any existing sites, so I really have no clue how that 
would work.

Given that XForms submits in XML format and HTML 4 forms traditionally 
use URL encoding (i.e. name=value&name2=value2...), would this binding 
only occur when the author includes something that explicitly requests 
this feature?  e.g. Something like using 
enctype="application/x-www-form+xml", which is described in the current 
WF2 draft.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-forms/2006Sep/0006

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Wednesday, 6 September 2006 03:23:21 UTC