Re: A rose by any other name...

John,

> So, isn't it time for the name XForms (plant) to be changed to something 
> more reflective of what XForms is (a rose)?

I agree. Some history from my side, initially this was called
XHTML Extended Forms. Since that name was too long, XForms,
became the shortcut, however it was initially not the Shortname
for XML Forms, but for XHTML Extended Forms. The original design
was quite close to what WF2 is doing today, however we felt
it wasn't enough, hence XForms, the shortcut name, echoed back
into the early design phase and really made an Extended Forms
from HTML become something bigger and more closer to XML.

So the naming wasn't really too well thought out. However, for
the early years, it was good to somewhat hide something bigger
under the Forms umbrella, a more ambitious name would have caused
more curiousity from those parties never reading a spec and basing 
strong oppinions anticipating the area of the technology
derived only from its naming and potentially causing more delays in
a somewhat difficult political environment.

Similarly the entire Dynamic Web Application naming space is today
quite overloaded and somewhat antique. Therefore I am quite happy
that XForms is an idiom in itself regardless of trends, even
though it doesn't fully describe the technology.

Concluding, I'd like us to keep the XForms name but add something
meaningful to it. I'd also suggest making that the name for the
next version, ideally moving directly to 2.0 (which 1.1. could
have well been in retrospec):

"XForms 2.0: (TBD)"

OR maybe it might not be too late to just add such additional,
explanatory name to the XForms 1.1. Spec when we transition
to PR? After all, this isn't technical and doesn't change
anything with the technology.

All the best,

- Sebastian

PS: I like the buzz coming from the eXist community around "XRX"
(XQuery/REST/XForms) describing the new end-to-end XML stack
thats giving XForms such a boost. Maybe food for thought here.

Received on Friday, 25 January 2008 12:23:09 UTC