XForms User Interface doesn't use "User Interface" Consistently

In the User Interface chapter of XForms 1, "user interface" seems to
be used with at lest two different meanings and hints at a third.

At the start, it is used to refer to the user interface as an abstract
whole, but under switch it is used to refer to the current, concretely
rendered, subset; in fact, in one sentence, the plural of the former
definition is used almost adjacent to the singular of the second
definition.

Unless you read the document as a whole, a third interpretation is
possible, which is that of a self contained subset, e.g. when a single
document has several forms, only one of which should be completed at
any one time.  (Although the examples are not good at showing this, it
is fairly clear that switch is an attempt at an abstraction of tabbed
dialogues, and, therefore, that one is expected to complete many or all
of the cases before submitting the form.)

I think the confusion arises because of trying to bolt on a feature
that doesn't match the terms of reference of the chapter.  The terms 
of reference are about telling the user agent enough about the
clustering of the fields to allow it to decompose them into multiple
panes, but switch is about explicitly specifying that decomposition
into panes.

Received on Friday, 10 June 2005 22:41:06 UTC