Re: New browser-based XForms processor

Hi Claudius,

For performance increasing, especially because of IE slowness,  I'm also 
considering XML data islands to be used by XSLTForms instead of 
Javascript objects. Those Javascript objects are now also used to store 
meta data whether the corresponding node (which might be an attribute) 
is valid, read-only, associated with an XML Schema type and so on. 
That's why instance data would have to be expanded with extra attributes 
and attributes would have to be stored as elements! XSLT might then help 
for expanding and serializing.

Using native XPath is also an interesting idea for reducing Javascript 
number of instructions about all those meta data. Unfortunately, native 
XPath is just XPath 1.0. XForms recommendation defines very useful extra 
XPath functions and, probably XPath 2.0 will be considered for next 
recommendation. Those functions are mandatory for effective web 
applications without Javascript instructions. That's why XSLTForms will 
keep its own XPath engine for evaluating "XForms" XPath expressions. 
There is another important reason for this: when performing an XPath 
evaluation, XSLTForms collects dependencies and I don't know how this 
could be done in a different manner.

I will look at your new project with great interest.

-Alain
> Hi,
>
> I have started to develop a new browser-based XForms processor, which 
> will make use of browsers' native XPath and XSLT capabilities.
> Thus, the approach is as follows:
> - transforming XForms page into XHTML + JS page by using XSLT in 
> browser (Alain Couthures' very good idea);
> - storing instance data as XML within the page;
> - bounding this data to UI controls by using browsers' 
> document.evaluate() function (except IE, which is a rara avis, and 
> will be dealt with later);
>  
> A very small example can be found here: 
> http://extxsltforms.sourceforge.net/sitKubera/examples/kuberaForms/example1.xml
>
> The project will be hosted here: 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/kuberaforms/
>
>
> Claudius Teodorescu
> http://kuberam.ro
>
>