Re: Some questions about dialogs

Even accepting that the run-time dialog is mapped directly to markup, same 
as a group or a switch case, doesn't "close the door" on using it multiple 
times simultaneously because we have XForms repeat.

The repeat wraps around the dialog and makes one for each node in the 
nodeset.  Each dialog stores its data within the subtree of that node. 
Making a new dialog is an insert.  One would still separately show and 
hide the new dialog.  In order to do so from outside the repeat, one would 
have to first set the repeat index, then show the identified dialog. 

Sure the bit about the repeat index is a bit less direct than ideal, and 
sure it would be nicer to have the dialog component contain its own data 
model to be created any time the component is instantiated, but given how 
relatively rarely we expect multiple simultaneous instances of the same 
dialog, it seems reasonable to allow it to be a bit harder to do in our 
first release of XForms dialogs. 

The main thing is that we've thought through this enough to know that the 
simpler dialog construct we're adding now has no technical obstacle that 
would prevent it from being used later with a component or subform 
technology.

Cheers,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM, Interactive Documents and Web 2.0 Applications
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





From:
Erik Bruchez <ebruchez@orbeon.com>
To:
Forms WG <public-forms@w3.org>
Date:
06/20/2009 10:43 AM
Subject:
Re: Some questions about dialogs



Nick  / all,

> Until we know better how we will handle components I will write the 
> text so that only one instance of a dialog can be open at once.

I also think now that it is better not to add all that complexity to 
the specification and implementation, for a feature which will be used 
only very rarely.

Further, we are not closing the door to supporting this in the future 
if really needed.

-Erik

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