W3C Forms teleconference October 6, 2010

* Present

Steven Pemberton, CWI/W3C (chair)
Uli Lissé, DreamLabs
Leigh Klotz, Xerox (minutes)
Erik Bruchez, Orbeon
John Boyer, IBM
Philip Fennell, MarkLogic
Nick van den Bleeken, Inventive Designers [late]

* Agenda

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2010Oct/0002.html

* Previous Minutes

* Lyon

Teleconference times Meeting details Registration http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35125/TPAC2010reg/

Steven Pemberton: Please register before the 22nd. One other person is arriving; Joern Turner is suggesting Lars Windauer.

* XForms Forum Software by dr.cw.ray

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-forms/2010Oct/0000.html

Leigh Klotz: Dr. Ray has announced this forum software is available under BSD-like license. It's almost all XForms but some XBL1.

* Getting Started on XForms 1.2/2.0 Moving Forward

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2010Oct/0001.html http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/wiki/Category:XForms12

Steven Pemberton: Erik, please suggest topics.
Erik Bruchez: I would like to see what the group's position is for next steps. Some features are proposed and have significant content, such as Nick's XPath 2.0 page. So what is the process?
Steven Pemberton: I need time, but we said we would use the wiki for the specs. I produced a wiki version of the spec (except for internal links). The next steps are re-factoring the 1.1 spec to start editing it, and getting the software to convert wiki to convert the wiki to HTML.
Erik Bruchez: How would refactoring 1.1 work? I thought we had proposed ...
Steven Pemberton: I mean re-factoring the spec for 1.2, splitting it out into independent pieces. Submission, controls, events, and so on.
Erik Bruchez: Do we need to do that absolutely.
Leigh Klotz: I thought Erik was asking about 2.0?
Erik Bruchez: All the future features are XForms 1.2. It seems like that's what we're doing. So my question is about immediate next steps.
Steven Pemberton: We're doing the text in wiki is until we get the spec to start editing. We could decide not to break the spec up into chunks, but I think with many editors it will make life harder. Editing the whole spec is enormous.
Erik Bruchez: For the XPath 2.0 sub-spec that Nick did, I'm not sure what I think about mixing things back into the big spec. There was an appealing notion we could say how we'd do it in XForms, and how we amend the 1.1 spec. Is that something we're still thinking about? The text on the wiki sounds great, but is merging still the final step?
Steven Pemberton: You mean a thin spec, describing the changes?
Erik Bruchez: I thought that was discussed. There's a lot on the plate. There's agreeing on things, which is time-consuming. There's editorial work.
Steven Pemberton: It seems to me breaking it up and adding to it is less work.
Erik Bruchez: So a wiki version of the 1.2 spec?
Steven Pemberton: It's already converted to wiki format. The struggle is with internal references. The next step is to produce the final spec; we have some software that another group used but I haven't tried running that yet. http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/wiki/XForms_1.1_in_Wiki
Erik Bruchez: So for now we just work on the individual sub-pages for items.
Steven Pemberton: Yes
Erik Bruchez: So we need people now working on individual features. I know a few were started but none are completed yet. We have some big ones with no conclusion: improved UI events, a lot of time, but we haven't agreed on basic things like what relevance means. It seems like more discussion is needed. case function is fairly simple. Some need finishing, such as XPath 2.0. I have a few myself. Are we clear; are people owning features?
Steven Pemberton: In the absence of one single editor we'll have to split it. We need champions for each feature, responsible for that section.
Erik Bruchez: I'm particularly interested in variable, xpath 2.0, input ui events, custom xpath functions. We might have some orphan features.
Leigh Klotz: Charlie was doing JSON submission.
Erik Bruchez: How are we going to put a cutoff point?
Steven Pemberton: We have a high wish list. If they get written, we include them. Strictly speaking, we should have our first WD now. I'm hoping that at the end of the F2F we'll have solidified what is in 1.2 and have the path.
Steven Pemberton: The important thing we should do a definitive triage for 1.2 at the F2F, and have a list. And the introductory paragraph of differences with XForms 1.1, plus owners for each part, a draft within a month.
Erik Bruchez: Is there a F2F agenda?
Steven Pemberton: We need that in the next couple of weeks.
Erik Bruchez: I'm trying to get the ball rolling. We have some unresolved discussion from last year, especially the discussion on basic XForms notions such as relevance. It's not really a 1.2 feature; I was hoping for UI event revamping. I don't know, but postponing it seems risky. The sooner we agree on core revisions of relevance and visibility the better. It's hard to discuss on the phone.
Steven Pemberton: A lot of people at the F2F will be on the phone. Do we want to have 1.2/2.0 split evenly?
John Boyer: I want longer for 1.2.
Steven Pemberton: Then 3 days for 1.2 and 1 for 2.0? OK. So maybe we can hash out the agenda for the F2F? Or would you rather talk about some of the issues now.

* F2F Agenda

Steven Pemberton: There's the spec mechanics, but also issues. How about relevance and visible?

** Visibility and Relevance (core concepts)

Erik Bruchez: You said it wasn't what relevance was about initially. Some non-relevant stuff in my product is visible. We didn't resolve anything. But we need to resolve that so we can revise the UI events. Our product essentially equates relevance with visibility, but we couldn't agree on that.

** Declarative Style and Rebuild

John Boyer: The only way I can figure out the spec saying a lot less if we remove the concept of rebuild altogether and let the implementation figure out when to rebuild.
Steven Pemberton: So declarative style and rebuild, and JSON submission aren't in the list.

** JSON Round Trip

John Boyer: Is it larger than JSON submission?
Steven Pemberton: JSON round trip.
Erik Bruchez: The most frequent use case was calling a JSON API service.
John Boyer: But XML on the inside.
Steven Pemberton: I've suggested other possibilities for that as well. It doesn't just have to be JSON. Other common data types like VCAL.

** Custom Functions

John Boyer: Yes, we got pretty far.
Erik Bruchez: I think I kind of owned it. I don't know if there was anything controversial. We had a proposal with a simple solution: a new function as an XPath expression. http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/wiki/Custom_XPath_functions

** Initial Value MIP

Erik Bruchez: We call it default but that's a bad name.
Steven Pemberton: It ensures that the element or value exists?
Erik Bruchez: No, it gives a value only if it doesn't exist.
Steven Pemberton: If you want to bind to something that's not there, you have to create it. There ought to be a declarative way of binding.
John Boyer: You mean a schema with a choice?
Steven Pemberton: Binding to attributes that aren't there?
John Boyer: Mini-lazy authoring, that creates the node.
Leigh Klotz: We have insert.
Steven Pemberton: It's not really declarative. You wait for the event and insert it if not there.
Leigh Klotz: If you have four A elements in a row and have an input bound to an attribute on A, just using a MIP to declare an attribute into existence doesn't work. Insert at least has the hooks to let you decide what to do. We may want some syntactic sugar but insert has the design.
John Boyer: The big brother is the optional content; you may have cash, credit, COD. Then you insert them all and use relevance to hide the others. That creates a disconnect between the live-running instance and the schema-valid instance. If you reload a saved instance from the form, if you reload the saved instance you've lost the COD option.
Steven Pemberton: Let's just note this issue and move on.

** Packaging of model

Steven Pemberton: model/@src
John Boyer: model enhancement requirements, src on model, encapsulation, xinclude?
Leigh Klotz: XBL
John Boyer: It's easy to say you should use XInclude; that's like saying "Use XML Events." Do we ask processors to support XBL?
Leigh Klotz: I don't think it's as embedded as XML Events.
John Boyer: Like "MAY"
Leigh Klotz: Like a best practice. I don't think we need core changes, but I think we need to write something and publish it. We still have to debate it and decide what to do.

** Dialog

John Boyer: Dialog.

** Declarative Style and Rebuild

John Boyer: It removes a significant chunk of the model element. It's a behavioral change; the event and processing will go away.

** Other

Steven Pemberton: Anything else?
Leigh Klotz: I think we should go through the XForms12 category at the F2F.
Steven Pemberton: Yes, but anything missing?

John Boyer: For model-based switch, Michael Sperberg-McQueen says we need the CSS equivalent of repeat-item for switch cases.
Steven Pemberton: switch-case styling

Steven Pemberton: Anything else?
Leigh Klotz: We should add XBL to the list.

Steven Pemberton: So to add things to the agenda for the F2F add them to Category XForms12.

* IRC Minutes

http://www.w3.org/2010/10/06-forms-minutes.html

* Meeting Ends