Charlie Wiecha, IBM
John Boyer, IBM (chair)
Leigh Klotz, Xerox (minutes)
Nick van den Bleeken, Inventive Designers
Paul Butcher, WebBackplane
Roger Pérez, SATEC
Steven Pemberton, CWI/W3C
Uli Lissé, DreamLabs
Keith Wells, IBM
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2008Nov/0013.html
John Boyer: I tried to use the
report without reading it and didn't know it required the XPI. So
we need a different implementation report.
Keith Wells: It's easy enough to pull
out.
John Boyer: If you could make it work
without the plugin that's OK too.
Keith Wells: I'd rather do that;
probably this week. If not I'll go back to plan B.
Leigh Klotz: I asked Kenneth; the
message has no attachment. So I don't know what happened.
John Boyer: I checked and I never got
a message from you for it.
Leigh Klotz: Then we have to go update
to the latest pubrules again.
John Boyer: They upgraded the JVM on
the box that runs pubrules and it ran out of memory and they tried
to get it fixed.
Charlie Wiecha: We planned to
update the note with examples from TPAC. It's become clear we need
to step back to an earlier point than the one about composition to
the one that we have assets. It's been shown to me that we haven't
made the point that XForms is relevant to rich web applications.
We'll propose to build something substantial in an XG
renewal.
John Boyer: Yes, there is a such a
perception. They seem to want to write picky, low-level
stuff.
Charlie Wiecha: Yes, we probably have
to write it in XForms+SVG, JavaScript, Flex or Silverlight. It's
analogous to the MXML layer above ActionScript. People like that.
Unless we really do the apps two or three times, we won't get the
point across.
John Boyer: It now focuses on accessing XForms within HTML and XHTML pages. Rather than having an attribute called form, we assumed the existence of the form element. Other adopting languages would be stronger in the XML space and have form elements as well (e.g. ODF). So we may not need a form attribute.
John Boyer: Next, Leigh made a good suggestion about the default instance. The spec used to have a default attribute. That's been replaced by an instance attribute. We also talked about adding this to the xf:model element, but it wasn't necessary in this spec to assume that. It turned out to be a little challenging to have the model attribute override the instance attribute. I spent the most time trying to figure that out and couldn't.
Nick van: [irc] John, did you saw
my e-mail with remarks to the spec (boolean-fromn-string(),
setFocus(), startsize)
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2008Nov/0021.html
(I've sent it today bcz I didn't had an internet connection for a
week)
John Boyer: I did see that and we'll
get to it.
John Boyer: On the instance attribute, if it's not present or if it's empty, then you get a generated instance. If it's expressed and indicates an XForms instance, that's the default. That was a good suggestion.
John Boyer: If you scroll through
the document you see nice examples of markup.
Leigh Klotz: I wounder if you could
use two different attributes for the examples?
John Boyer: I thought the xf:
everywhere does that. I wondered if I focused on the FormsA
instances, but drop the alignment with canonical XForms and put
that in an appendix.
Leigh Klotz: You can also drop the xf:
and say in the spec that the canonical examples are by default in
the xforms namespace.
John Boyer: I think we can just use an
appendix. In XForms 1.1, some example use the namespace and some
don't. It's not my highest priority.
John Boyer: Nick pointed out, if
you want to repeat a tr: <tr name="item" id="item"
startsize="1">
John Boyer: Name gives the name and
startsize indicates it is a repeat item to start. Nick points out
that the repeat attributes claim to repeat content of the element
to which they are attached, not the elements themselves.
Leigh Klotz: That caused us a problem
with tr repeats in the past.
Nick van: [irc] put it on tbody
John Boyer: I found it hard to do
anything else other than repeating the element.
Nick van: [irc] side note : Steven
once said that xf:repeat isn't allowed as a child of tbody
Nick van: The only downside of putting
it on the element is if you have two table rows that need to be
repeated they have to be repeated for every row in a nodeset.
John Boyer: A pair of rows, for
example. But it's still just an onramp.
Nick van: Steven said xf:repeat isn't
a child of tbody.
Leigh Klotz: James Clarke's RNG seems
to think that you can have multiple tbody per table.
John Boyer: What makes it not
allowed?
Steven Pemberton: By modularization
and its allowable extensions of tables.
John Boyer: That gets at another
point. How do we make this better than what's currently expressed?
CSS?
Nick van: Put repeat-nodeset on tbody
with item. That's correct according to the spec.
John Boyer: I guess I don't understand
why we can't have an element child of tbody?
Steven Pemberton: It was to do with
the choices made with XHTML modularization about where extensions
went. You can't replace the body element of XHTML with a different
element and still call it XHTML. The places allowed were attributes
on elements and particular marked points. Table is one where there
wasn't an extension point.
Charlie Wiecha: But maybe John's point
is as it's unrolled, it's just a tbody.
Nick van: But the browser will
stop.
Charlie Wiecha: Because it has no
distinction between the table and the runtime.
John Boyer: But what causes the
browser to fail? Why can't we fix that?
Nick van: That needs to be fixed in
another spec.
John Boyer: We could use
repeat-nodeset but we as a WG had some problems agreeing on what it
should look like. Wouldn't we normally express this xf:repeat and
styling?
Uli Lissé: You can use
appearance on repeat in some implementations.
Nick van: display:table-cell isn't
supported in IE.
John Boyer: So how do people to repeat
in IE?
Paul Butcher: Repeat the content of
the repeat. We can't do it in tables because IE doesn't like having
things on rows in tables.
John Boyer: So how do we re-write the
example?
Leigh Klotz: There is no good solution
here; we added repeat attributes to XForms for this reason. XForms
isn't a host language that wraps XHTML (like XSLT does) so we can't
re-write the rules of XHTML.
John Boyer: So we can't use XForms
elements to extend web pages in any place we want. What would a web
browser fail?
Leigh Klotz: Nobody was ever able to
make FormsPlayer do tables.
John Boyer: So it's odd we use
attributes in this one spot here.
Leigh Klotz: Or it's an early version
of what we're doing now.
Steven Pemberton: It's about li, p,
SVG elements. The thing about attributes is that it's easy to have
the existing document structure and put attributes on them to get a
different runtime behavior, but it doesn't get in the way of other
processing systems that get in the way of the document. So using
attributes is a more general solution where you don't have to be
able to insert.
Leigh Klotz: We get the dynamism from
being integrated into the language; with the XSLT approach we'd be
at step in the processing model.
Steven Pemberton: RDFa will work on
any language as well. With attributes, the script runs on the DOM
and the repeat attributes start working.
John Boyer: So if I amend this
example, that would be fine. I need to put the repeat-nodeset on
the tbody.
Nick van: Yes.
John Boyer: So you're right, it sounds
like the repeat-attributes were the early version of this attribute
thing that's been maturing.
Action 2008-11-12.1: John Boyer to update http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.2/modules/streamlined/index-all.html#default-data-instance-startsize to have canonical XForms representation use tbody/@repeat-nodeset
onClick="document.getElementById(X).setvalue(1234.567)"
John Boyer: There is a note about
.value assignments for formatting.
Charlie Wiecha: Does it make sense to
have the default action of the value-changed event do that
assignment?
John Boyer: Then you can't stop the
default action.
Charlie Wiecha: It seems to require a
lot of model understanding here.
John Boyer: I meant if you want to
change the data formatting.
Charlie Wiecha: It's not clear.
John Boyer: I guess it needs better
wording. .value="xyz" will not invoke setvalue behavior.
Charlie Wiecha: Conversely if you do
invoke setvalue
John Boyer: The first thing it will do
is re-write the value.
Action 2008-11-12.2: John Boyer to clarify that setvalue starts by setting .value in http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.2/modules/streamlined/index-all.html#get-set-value
Nick van: As Mark Birbeck pointed
out there is already a focus function in DOM Level 2.
John Boyer: Can we overload the
behavior of that method?
Nick van: In JavaScript.
John Boyer: And that method is
attached to all elements?
Nick van: Yes.
Paul Butcher: In what way do we
override it?
John Boyer: On repeat form
controls.
Paul Butcher: Of course.
John Boyer: And containers (case). We
go into case and call its focus. What normally happens when you
focus on a container?
Paul Butcher: In IE it does
nothing.
John Boyer: Should we switch it
now?
Nick van: There is a function that
does almost the same thing.
Charlie Wiecha: The main difference is
the container behavior.
John Boyer: We say "child form control
list" but there is no accounting for things that may be
non-relevant.
Leigh Klotz: I think it's a question
of what we want with scripts that don't know much about us: do they
go through us or do they go around us?
Nick van: Does the repeat index
change?
John Boyer: I would say it does.
Leigh Klotz: I would like to have
other packages work through ours.
John Boyer: I'd like to have the
add-row operation focus on the new row.
Nick van: We already need to wrap the
focus element.
John Boyer: That sounds fair.
Action 2008-11-12.3: John Boyer to rename setfocus to focus in http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.2/modules/streamlined/index-all.html#setfocus
John Boyer: There is an additional boolean parameter. This captures the basic use cases. The boolean is there for for deleting the only row in a table: empty or one row cleared.
Nick van: I prefer the castign
solution, so same as boolean-from-string but not using it.
John Boyer: Does anybody have an
action item to add that text.
Nick van: There's a resolution but no
action item.
John Boyer: You know what happens
then.
Nick van: I won't forget.
John Boyer: I have the increased
understanding that the name WebFormsA is not acceptable to the WG.
Before Steven leaves I want to make sure we do get a shortname
request. Steven, I sent you a message already. You will just need
to replace the name. How about FormsA?
Nick van: FormsA
Uli Lissé: FormsA
Roger Pérez: FormsA
Charlie Wiecha: We have XForms and
FormsA.
Leigh Klotz: There's AForms...
John Boyer: I propose a resolution
that we call it FormsA.
Nick van: Yes.
Paul Butcher: Yes.
John Boyer: Is there anyone on the
call who objects to that as a resolution? Can everyone live with
it?
Steven Pemberton: [irc] I can live
with it
John Boyer: So it will remove the
possibility of a formal objection. I know it will make Raman happy.
I appreciate the WG entertaining the conversation.
Leigh Klotz: Or AForms.
John Boyer: Are you OK with calling it
FormsA?
Leigh Klotz: Sure.
Resolution 2008-11-12.1: We change WebFormsA to FormsA and make a shortname request.
John Boyer: Steven, are you OK with
doing that?
Steven Pemberton: Can you ask for a
shortname before the draft is ready? I'll check.
John Boyer: Can we decide to publish
this before we've got through every last detail on the telecon? I
suspect by next week we'll have the resolution.
John Boyer: I should rev the spec and send you another message.
Steven Pemberton: [leaves]
Action 2008-11-12.4: Nick van den Bleeken to proctor implementation of http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2008Sep/att-0025/2008-09-10.html#resolution1 for XForms 1.2
John Boyer: Assuming that that goes
in, I'm OK to have the FormsA spec reference XForms 1.1 but in
places where I have said boolean-from-string...
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.2/modules/streamlined/index-all.html#declarative-data-access
I want to use readonly="isManager"
Leigh Klotz: Why don't you just do it?
We can update the reference to XForms 1.2 when we publish it.
John Boyer: does readonly="isManager"
work in XForms 1.2?
Nick van: That will work in 1.2.
context as well.
Leigh Klotz: Just put in an XML
comment in the example that says XForms 1.2.
John Boyer: And in the spec I can use
the alternate language that says the result is interpreted.
Action 2008-11-12.5: John Boyer to implement http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2008Sep/att-0025/2008-09-10.html#resolution1 for FormsA
John Boyer: It's the nearest
ancestor control. We will have to use slash. We also discussed
@name as creating XPath variables. Let's get this out and possibly
add variable notation later if someone is insistent.
John Boyer: Is that OK with
everyone?
Nick van: [irc] I also think that we
can add that later (variable notation)
John Boyer: It looks simple.
Leigh Klotz: So I like your idea of
moving the XForms XML examples out to an appendix or separate
document to keep the simple syntax simple.
John Boyer: I want to reference the
primer in the introduction.
Leigh Klotz: Can't we just publish
that, not in TR space?
John Boyer: Good point.
Leigh Klotz: We can publish a short
one there first, then revise it later.
John Boyer: That clarifies where to
put it. And I can link to it.
Leigh Klotz: An informative reference.
And I still think we should move the examples out to a separate
document or appendix and assume the XForms namespace there.
John Boyer: Yes.
Action 2008-11-12.6: John Boyer to move XML examples out of http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.2/modules/streamlined/index-all.html and into an appendix, and assume XForms namespace.
John Boyer: [drops]