Comments on XForms Jan 22, 2002 WD

I have the following concerns about the XForms Last Call Working
Draft [1]:

o The specification fails to conform to the W3C's Universal Access
 principle [2].  This principle implies W3C technology should be
 implementable on any hardware.  [1], however, requires an implementation
 support numerous technologies including: XML Schema Part 1, XML 
 Schema Part 2, DOM 2 Events, XML Events, XPath, XLink, P3P.  This is 
 an unacceptable burden for low-end devices.

 The specification should include layers for the major functionality
 (e.g. Event, Constraints, User Interface, Actions, etc.).  The
 specification should define modules per XHTML Modularization [3].
 Without well defined layers/modules, adoption will be reduced.  There
 will also be partial implementations and thus interoperability problems.

o The Status of the Document ([1]) suggests the WG will skip the
 Candidate Recommendation (CR) phase if the given criteria are met.  The
 W3C should issue an explicit CFP (particularly requesting interoperability 
 feedback) and the CR phase should not be skipped.

o [1] states comments should be sent to www-forms@w3.org.  Since this
 is a typo and really should have been www-forms-editor@w3.org, the W3C
 must assure the numerous comments about [1] that were sent to www-forms 
 are addressed (as if the email was sent to www-forms-editor).

The WG's Charter [4] includes Profiles and Test Suites in its list of 
deliverables.  This deliverable does not appear to have materialized - 
there is no reference to it in [1] or in the WG's Home Page [5].  This 
deliverable should be considered a "relevant requirement of the charter" 
per the W3C's Process Document [6].  [1] should not be advanced
without this deliverable.

Until the above issues are addressed, this document should remain in 
a Working Draft state.

Art Barstow
---

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xforms-20020118/
[2] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/#universal
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-modularization/
[4] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/2000/Charter.html 
[5] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/Group/
[6] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process-20010719/tr.html#last-call

Received on Monday, 18 February 2002 09:10:34 UTC