- From: Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@formsPlayer.com>
- Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:37:54 +0000
- To: "Sikora, Gary" <gjsikora@progeny.net>
- Cc: "John Boyer" <boyerj@ca.ibm.com>, "Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer" <sebastian@dreamlab.net>, "new Forms WG" <public-forms@w3.org>, "Charles F Wiecha" <wiecha@us.ibm.com>
Hi Gary, > I agree with you ... there are so many competing user interface technologies > that many, perhaps most, practitioners view XForm on the complicated side > ... don't have the trained staff to support ... this is fact from several years > supporting XForms and leveraging internal projects. I agree back with you back again. :) I would bet that a lot of software projects are still just like they always were; a database and a front-end. It's just that what people put in the middle to try to make it as easy as possible to generate the UI side keeps changing...Struts, Rails, etc., but often just some custom written, in-house ASP or JSP. But the old questions are still there; given some data that I know I must have for my application, what's the quickest way to get a UI that reflects that data? Well, Rails can give it to you fast, and a lot of other technologies can too. But XForms _could_ give it faster, and more flexibly, and in a device-independent way...etc., etc. :) My point being -- as I think you are saying, too -- that the 'forms' question is hardly 'solved'; in fact we have barely scratched the surface in terms of the role that XForms could play. (And as for the UI part of SOA, XForms is both a perfect fit _and_ the perfect name! Again, we've barely scratched the surface here.) > FormFaces on SourceForge does have a lot of activity. Though we view this > as perhaps 75% academia and R&D, which isn't bad. I agree...it's all good. > Where XForms is going is a good question ... > > I think it needs to be maintained as a Web technology which means > technology independent ... that is why AJAX's successful. Yes, that is true. XForms has the advantage of being a standard, too, so there is a lot of mileage for XForms to be 'standard Ajax'. > I think there should be profiles, not all or nothing ... so perhaps simple > validation, minimal controls, etc ... I definitely agree with you there, and I think others would too. Profiles that include a set of basic functions, or even a list of industry-specific extended functions, datatypes, etc., would be a good way to help adoption. > ... other ideas? Lots! As John said, this sounds like something we could talk about at the FtF. Regards, Mark -- Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer mark.birbeck@formsPlayer.com | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232 http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com standards. innovation.
Received on Saturday, 26 January 2008 11:38:02 UTC