Re: normalizedString/input and string/textarea?

Hi Alain,

OK, so a few things.

First, what I said about normalized string was confusing it with XPath 
normalize space, which collapses whitespace.

Second, I see your point that now, with tabbed browsers, hitting Ctrl-Tab 
now switches tabs, whereas it used to insert a tab. However, I have a 
browser plugin implementatoin that does still allow Ctrl-Tab to be used to 
enter a tab.  Not sure it is of much value to end-users, but there has not 
been a point in making a restriction to the normal behavior of the 
underlying control.

Third, I still think that normalizedString would not be any different than 
just string because it does not restrict tabs, returns and linefeeds from 
the lexical space of the XML node.  The value space replaces tabs, returns 
and linefeeds with spaces, but the lexical space allows them.

Fourth, even if there were a difference, it would then be harder to use 
XForms because we set default datatypes at the data layer, and we cannot 
reasonably do that based on what UI controls are bound to the data. 
Suppose input had a binding restriction to normalizedString.  If we bound 
it to a string, the default datatype, then an exception would occur unless 
someone used a type MIP to assign normalizedString to the data node.  The 
alternative would be that we'd have to make normalizedString the default, 
but then a type MIP would have to be used to assign string to any node one 
intended to bind to a textarea.  This would be a lot more work to obtain 
restrictions that the UI controls themselves implement.

Cheers,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Distinguished Engineer, IBM Forms and Smarter Web Applications
IBM Canada Software Lab, Victoria
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer
Blog RSS feed: 
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/rss/JohnBoyer?flavor=rssdw





From:   Alain Couthures <alain.couthures@agencexml.com>
To:     John Boyer/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA
Cc:     "www-forms@w3.org" <www-forms@w3.org>
Date:   04/14/2011 09:37 AM
Subject:        Re: normalizedString/input and string/textarea?
Sent by:        www-forms-request@w3.org



Hi John,

Do you mean that the tab character is allowed for xf:input? It doesn't 
seem possible for HTML input, am I wrong?

Thanks!

-Alain

Le 14/04/2011 18:26, John Boyer a écrit : 
Hi Alain, 

xsd:string is the almost-right datatype, and so there has been no priority 
on doing better. 
normalizedString does stuff to a string that we would not want. 
The exact right datatype would be one pattern derived from string with the 
regex pattern [^\n] as the only thing input really says differently than 
textarea is single line input. 

Cheers, 
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Distinguished Engineer, IBM Forms and Smarter Web Applications
IBM Canada Software Lab, Victoria
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer
Blog RSS feed: 
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/rss/JohnBoyer?flavor=rssdw





From:        Alain Couthures <alain.couthures@agencexml.com> 
To:        "www-forms@w3.org" <www-forms@w3.org> 
Date:        04/14/2011 09:03 AM 
Subject:        normalizedString/input and string/textarea? 
Sent by:        www-forms-request@w3.org 



Hello,

I'm still perplex about the differences between core forms input controls.

More specifically, if I want to edit an instance according to types, I 
would consider that xsd:string is not correct for xf:input but for 
xf:textarea.

It is obvious that the carriage return, line feed and tab characters 
cannot be entered using xf:input but xf:textarea.

So, why isn't xsd:normalizedString the default type for xf:input?

Thank you very much for your answers!

Alain Couthures
<agenceXML>
http://www.agencexml.com/xsltforms