Propose drop of test 11.9.p multipart-post on mailto

Dear Forms WG,

XForms submissions are required to support http and https, where data can 
be submitted in a variety of serializations such as XML and tag-value 
pairs (i.e. url encoded).

Optionally, the specification suggests that if an XForms implementation is 
to support email, then use of the mailto scheme in the XForms submission 
resource is the way to go.

This non-required feature has resulted in some exhaustive testing that 
appears to be in excess of what the working group membership is able to 
implement.  In fact, if memory serves, the only mailto support available 
is coming from the Ubiquity XForms engine.  This is not a bad thing, since 
we only need one implementation of non-required features.  However, the 
particular combination of the mailto scheme and multipart-post corresponds 
to a mail message attachment in a data serialization that uses XML for 
data and more parts for the various uploads in the data.

While this variation seems useful and could be implemented by a 
client-side plugin that had direct access to mail APIs, an implementation 
of this variation is not available to the working group through any 
implementation reports.  It does not seem necessary to test this variation 
in order to prove the basic point that the mailto scheme can be used in 
the XForms submission resource URI.  Put another way, it does not seem 
reasonable to remove the suggestion of using a mailto scheme from the 
specification because one of the variations of using a mailto URI with 
other features of XForms submissions has no reported implementations.

Unless there is another implementer who can provide mailto submission in 
combination with multipart-post method in an implementation report, I 
would propose that we remove this test from the test suite in order to 
allow XForms 1.1 advancement to PR.  The test currently numbered 11.9.r 
should be moved into its place, as this tests mailto with the url 
encoding, a variant for which we do have a reported implementation.  This 
would remove the hole in the lexicographic enumeration of the tests.

Thanks,
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
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Received on Tuesday, 5 May 2009 16:18:59 UTC