Re: Fw: XForms 1.2 Design Principles, Forms Architecture

Hi Nick,

I think you're still missing the main points.

You wrote:
> But if an HTML author writes a form:
>
>   <form action="search-by-name.php" method="get">
>    <input name="fn" onchange="output.innerHTML=fn.value + ' ' + sn.value" />
>    <input name="sn" onchange="output.innerHTML=fn.value + ' ' + sn.value" />
>    <span id="output"></span>
>
>
>     <button name="submit" type="button" onclick="verifyAndSubmit()">Submit</button>
>  </form>

I didn't say they would produce this. I said that imagine they first have this:

  <form action="search-by-name.php" method="get">
    <input name="fn" />
    <input name="sn" />
  </form>

How would they then concatenate the first name and surname? And I
concluded that they could either use script, or we can give them our
output tag. I wasn't saying that they should _convert_ script they'd
already written (although hopefully other developers will)...I was
saying that we can save them the trouble of having to use script in
the first place.

So giving them the output tag is much better than script, but to do
that we need to have an 'XForms infoset' which the original HTML form
maps to.


> It is hard for me to accept that a form author is willing to convert his
> javascript to XPath and move those expressions to other elements in the
> document for calculates and validation. And is not willing to move the
> submit related attributes to the submit element (if he wants he can still
> use the action attribute, it is deprecated but still works).

The point I've been stressing is that the author is *not* really using
XPath. We're protecting them from having to learn XPath, by using
named variables. (This is what I described recently as a 'flat' value
space.)

Your argument is that if the author is prepared to take one step, why
can't we make them take two, three or four? And my argument is that we
should help them to take small steps, one after another.

Regards,

Mark

-- 
 Mark Birbeck

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Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2008 14:54:29 UTC