Feedback on 1.1: parse-error, xforms-submit-error, and xforms-link-exception

In XForms 1.0, an xforms-link-exception occurs if non-XML is returned in 
response to executing
1) the instance src attribute
2) the replae="instance" form of submission, where the content type is 
declared to be XML

XForms 1.0 also says that XForms 1.1 will create a separate exception to 
distinguish a failure to parse from a failure to obtain the XML (e.g. 
server unavailable).

First, this has not been done for the case of the instance src attribute. 
However, it is not critically necessary; an xforms-link-exception could 
persist.  The reason we indicated that a separate error would be created 
was to allow an xforms-submit-error to discover that a parse error was the 
reason why a submission was failing.

The XForms 1.1 working draft does now add "parse-error" as a type of error 
in the context of xforms-submit-error, so I believe we have done this. 
However, we appear to have also left in the idea that the 
xforms-link-exception would occur.  This is broken for two reasons. First, 
the point of an xforms-submit-error is to allow processing to continue 
without success of the submission.  The xforms-link-exception violates 
that paradigm.  Second, it violates the paradigm completely in the sense 
that it appears in the text to say the link exception happens before the 
xforms-submit-error is dispatched.  This is problematic because the link 
exception is a fatal error, so the xforms-submit-error with parse-error 
would not occur.

This should be fixed by removing the xforms-link-exception from the 
xforms-submit default processing since the xforms-submit-error with 
parse-error will more properly notify the form that the submission failed.

John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Senior Product Architect/Research Scientist
Co-Chair, W3C XForms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com  http://www.ibm.com/software/

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer