First draft of Binding Attributes Module

A first draft of the binding attributes module is now available via links 
from the Forms WG page.
For convenience, here is the link: 
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.2/modules/instance/bindingAttributes/index-all.html

It was quite challenging to tease this out of XForms in a way that does 
not refer to XForms, but that is perhaps because the material is at such a 
fundamental level.  It will also be challenging to hear how well or poorly 
the format of this document compares to XHTML modularization documents.

I found it necessary to be very rigorous in the definition of terms, so 
you will notice quite a few more terms than we previously defined.

This module contains the ref and nodeset attributes of course, as well as 
the context attribute.  It defines context universally for all single node 
bindings and nodeset bindings.

This module also defines most of the XPath functions in the library. It is 
appropriate to put them at this low level so they can be used all up the 
chain of modules to XForms.  A few of the functions were appropriate to 
include only in the higher level modules (model, instance, actions, 
repeat), so if you are an author/editor of one of those modules, please 
see the additions I made to your module in the wiki.

There is some remaining work, specifically

1) New examples are needed for the context() and current() functions, 
which right now are still XForms-centric
2) This is the appropriate module for definitions of references, 
dependencies, dynamic dependencies and so forth, but it is another 
surgical operation in which some of the content needs to go up to higher 
level modules.

It will be necessary for the instance module to "import" this module to 
help explain its setvalue, insert and delete actions.  References to 
functions like the context() function can refer to the binding attributes 
module.

Cheers,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Senior Technical Staff Member
Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
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