Re: web form for tcdl

Hi Christophe,

Christophe Strobbe wrote:
>
> Hi Vangelis,
>
> At 20:45 15/05/2007, Evangelos Vlachogiannis wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I had an action item [1] to bring the discussion about web form we 
>> had during last teleconference.
>>
>> I was thinking about the web form during last week and it was not 
>> really clear to me what will be the purpose of the web form. I find 
>> two possible alternatives:
>>
>> 1. Make a very simple web form containing submitter {name, 
>> organisation, email}, and upload fields for tcdl metadata files and 
>> all supporting files (either single zip or one by one). In this case 
>> this is simple to implement but require more work from task force 
>> participants.
>
> Since you are comparing this option with an AJAX-based form, I assume 
> you mean a technically simple form (just HTML, CSS, possible some 
> client-side JavaScript checks). I don't see why such a form would only 
> have fields name, organization, e-mail address and file upload. More 
> specifically, why would we ask submitters to create and upload TCDL? 
> Why can't we have form fields for each of our metadata fields, have a 
> server-side script check the data, generate TCDL from this and send 
> the TCDL and the content files to the list?
I am sure this can be done but I prefer not to think about the effort;). 
Even if we ignore the effort such an implementation would be server 
technology specific (say php, jsp...) and wont be reusable. Consider the 
case of changing something in tcdl or making that rdf in future ;). In 
other words I am saying that if we decide to spend time to make such a 
"tcdl authoring tool" we should better make it "forward compatible". 
Thats why I am proposing xforms. Alternatively I would also be happy to 
have a very simple form and ask people to submit everything in a zip 
file. Maybe this could be at least a good start.
>
>
>> 2. Make a web form capable of creating tcdl online. In this case as 
>> the interface going to be complex I was wondering if we could use 
>> rich client technologies. Having that in mind I did some "play 
>> around" with such technologies. I have found a tool named ajaxforms 
>> [2] that can be used to transform xforms to ajax interfaces. I have 
>> made a very simple demo for testing. [3] is the ajax generated 
>> interface and [4] is the actual xform I have developed.
>> Having such an interface this can be a useful tool for promoting the 
>> submission by people out of the task force and provide automatic 
>> structural validation (see xforms validation capabilities). On the 
>> other hand except for requiring much more effort ;), the major issue 
>> is the accessibility of such technologies even if there are claims 
>> for the opposite (i.e. [5]). Note that ajaxforms seems not to use 
>> dojo but we could either try its accessibility or use other tool like 
>> chiba [6].
>
> Is anybody willing to evaluate the accessibility of the interface?
I have already asked Derk (from bentoweb) as CarlosV proposed. I will 
let you know about any feedback.
> I think the style sheet needs to be adapted because the background of 
> the tabs ("Submitter Information", "Formal Metadata", ...) looks bad 
> when you zoom the page. Colour contrast of the active tab may also be 
> an issue.
Thanks for the feedback. I am sure we need to play a bit with style for 
making this better. But lets take a first evaluation feedback to see if 
there is any chance to make that accessible.;)

BR,
Vangelis
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christophe
>
>
>> BR,
>> Vangelis
>>
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2007/05/15-tsdtf-minutes.html#action04
>> [2] http://ajaxforms.sourceforge.net/
>> [3] http://www.syros.aegean.gr/users/evlach/tcdlform/build/tcdl.html
>> [4] http://www.syros.aegean.gr/users/evlach/tcdlform/web/tcdl.xml
>> [5] http://dojotoolkit.org/node/623
>> [6] http://chiba.sourceforge.net/
>
>

-- 
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Evangelos Vlachogiannis
Researcher - PhD. Candidate
Contact: http://www.syros.aegean.gr/users/evlach/contactme.php
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Received on Wednesday, 16 May 2007 10:37:29 UTC