RE: xforms and wokflow?

Jason,

Ah...the days of going to the pub at lunchtime on a Friday -- I vaguely
remember them.

> Anyway, this is all a bit unfortunate given my current problem.
> even if I create separate forms, and code all the workflow to 
> drive those forms, I still dont think there is a way I can 
> get a form to actually finish the job for me and send all the 
> final submissions, emails etc. I think I'd be stuck with 
> writing my own x-forms parser/interpreter and trying to do 
> the submissions myself if I want to keep all that in an 
> x-form format - which I do! its incredibly simple and 
> convenient as it is.

I don't quite follow, but are you saying that the XForms processor can't
send an email? If that's so, then there is no reason why not. We added
support for MAPI to version 2 of formsPlayer. And on our big list of things
to do (which does include going to the pub at lunchtime on a Friday, but we
just don't seem to get down that far in our list), we've even spec'd
everything out so that you can get at your contacts list via an XForms
instance.

If anything, the tricky bit is not email support, but support for submitting
to a dynamic URI, and for submitting to a variable number of end-points.

We support variable URIs in both versions of formsPlayer, although in quite
different ways. In fP 1 you need to use the xf:extension element, but in fP
2 it's much easier, and we use attribute value templates (AVTs). However,
neither of these techniques is standard, and since to do all the clever
things you described this feature is of fundamental importance, we need it
to be added to the XForms specification.

We don't yet support looping constructs, but David at Novell has spec'd out
a @while attribute, and we plan to implement that. (He has already
implemented it.) That should allow you to send a variable number of
submissions.

The point I'm making is that XForms is evolving very quickly, and it's
exactly the kind of 'real world' scenarios that you describe that XForms
aims to address. So the more use cases that get posted to this list, the
better XForms will become.

Regards,

Mark


Mark Birbeck
CEO
x-port.net Ltd.

e: Mark.Birbeck@x-port.net
t: +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
w: http://www.formsPlayer.com/
b: http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/

Download our XForms processor from
http://www.formsPlayer.com/

Received on Friday, 19 August 2005 13:33:47 UTC