Re: The message action is for messages, not arbitrary dialogs

Hi Ulrich,

Well, not that I like chameleon namespaces.  Far from it.  In fact I am 
beginning to wonder whether the amount of formalism we hope to achieve 
with the HTML WG around "Forms Tiny" will be enough to allow us to dump 
chameleon namespaces.  We'll be trying to get this into the discussion 
stream early in the new year (possibly tomorrow) and see what comes of it.

However, my point about message is orthogonal to the chameleon namespace 
issue.

The issue is the same whether you get the host language elements because 
they have been "chameleoned" in or whether you get them because the XForms 
spec uses English to say that the host language can add its own content to 
the message element.

Content elements added to message should be output only.  In fact, the 
emergence of forms tiny may give us an opportunity to formalize the 
content model for message when used in HTML, though the full breadth of 
restrictions is not be expressible with DTD or schema 1.0 (I believe 
schema 1.1 could pull it off though).

Happy New Year!

John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Workplace Forms Architect and Researcher
Co-Chair, W3C Forms 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





"Ulrich Nicolas Lissé" <unlisse@googlemail.com> 
Sent by: www-forms-request@w3.org
12/11/2006 05:31 AM

To
John Boyer/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA
cc
"Elliotte Harold" <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>, ebruchez@orbeon.com, 
www-forms@w3.org, www-forms-request@w3.org
Subject
Re: The message action is for messages, not arbitrary dialogs







John,

I agree completely. A message is a message is a message. However, when
the XForms 1.0 xf:message content model will be included in XForms 1.1
unchanged, things are getting ugly: You can then have XForms markup
within xf:message piggy-backed via the host language because of
XForms' 1.1 chameleon schema feature. One compelling reason more for
me to opt against chameleon madness.

Regards,
Uli.

On 12/8/06, John Boyer <boyerj@ca.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Elliotte,
>
> I should start by saying that, having heard you speak at the XML 
conference, this response is not entirely directed to you.
>
> Still, it is quite difficult to imagine a scenario in which 'message' 
might legitimately be used in place of 'dialog' and the many examples you 
cited are witnesses to that assertion.
>
> This keeps happening because of the definition of the word message.  A 
message is one-sided.  A dialog would be composed of two or more messages. 
 Like, you sent a message, and now I'm sending a message.  The two 
together are a dialog.
>
> But the most telling is the definition of message that actually appears 
in XForms recommendation.  It is defined to *display* a message *to* a 
user.  There is nothing *from* the user that comes back to XForms.
>
> The content model is defined to be char data and XForms *output*.  The 
spec then allows host language content to be added to message, which is 
*not* the same as saying more *XForms* controls can be added to the 
message content model.  The host language additions are not intended to 
violate the given definition but rather in support of it to allow 
decoration of the message.
>
> Should some example happen to arise where message is (mis)used to mean 
dialog, that doesn't mean we should accept that as proper usage in XForms.
>
> Cheers,
> John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
> STSM: Workplace Forms Architect and Researcher
> Co-Chair, W3C Forms 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
>
>
>
>
>
> Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
> Sent by: www-forms-request@w3.org
>
> 12/07/2006 07:46 AM
>
> Toebruchez@orbeon.com
>
> ccwww-forms@w3.org
>
> SubjectRe: The message action is for messages, not arbitrary dialogs
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Erik Bruchez wrote:
>
> > o I like explicit over implicit. If you say "message", you mean
> >   message. I don't know of any user interface framework that uses the
> >   term "message" to also mean "dialog".
> >
>
> Google MessageBox. .NET, SWT, and ASP.NET all use this term instead of
> DialogBox. Possibly they think of MessageBox as a restricted form of
> DialogBox just for messages; i.e. an alert. I'm not sure, but certainly
> the word message is sometimes used in place of the word dialog.
>
> --
> Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
> Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
> http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
>
>
>