Re: Comments on proposed editor's draft of XBL2 from Forms WG

On Wed, 22 Sep 2010, Leigh L. Klotz, Jr. wrote:
>
> We applaud the desire of the HTML5 WG to incorporate aspects of XBL into 
> HTML5.

The recent changes were just some edits I did on a whim, it isn't a work 
product of a W3C working group and does not represent any working group's 
desires or requirements.


> We applaud the desire of the HTML5 WG to incorporate aspects of XBL into 
> HTML, we ask that the HTML5 WG implement their own profile of XBL, and 
> the XBL2 Rec-track document not be changed to include the proposed 
> editor's changes removing XML namespaces, XML events, and other XML 
> features from the XBL2.

Are there implementations of XBL2? If not, keeping the draft doesn't seem 
particularly interesting. (Note that Mozilla's implementation of XBL, 
which long predates any XBL2 work, has less in common with XBL2 than does 
the most recent editor's draft with the dramatic changes.)


> 3. Orbeon uses a profile of XBL2 [Orbeon] to create components in their 
> XHTML+XForms product.  Their use case requires namespace support.  They 
> have a few additions to XBL2, notably parameters.  Orbeon has indicated 
> they have a number of concerns about some of the details of XBL2, and 
> that they are additionally not using all of it.  However, the parts they 
> are using are the parts that the proposed editor's draft removes.
>
> 4. Xerox also uses a similar profile of XBL2 [Xerox], though somewhat 
> reduced in features from Orbeon's implementation.  Xerox uses XBL2 as a 
> transformation step in an XProc-like pipeline to instantiate complex 
> controls in XHTML, both with and without XForms.  Xerox uses the 
> parameter mechanism designed by Orbeon, but the implementation is 
> different.

Since the variants of XBL2 implemented here are not what the XBL2 draft 
says (and are not mutually interoperable), the XBL2 draft doesn't seem 
particularly useful for these products. If people are interested in 
pursuing convergence for those implementations, or if people are 
interested in providing documentation to allow other implementations to 
interoperably implement the same technology as Orbeon or Xerox, then work 
would first have to occur to write a specification that actually describes 
those implementations. If anyone would like to do this work, the XBL2 
specification is available as a base under either the W3C copyright, if 
the work is to happen at the W3C, or under a Creative Commons license at 
mozilla.org, if the work is to happen elsewhere.

Personally my only goal with XBL is to see it implemented in Web browsers; 
interoperable Web browser implementations is the only criteria of success 
that I intend to apply to the development of this draft. I intend to 
continue editing the draft until it is in a form that browsers are willing 
to implement, or until it is clear that the changes that would be required 
to reach this state would result in the technology being uninteresting. 
Implementations outside of the Web are fine too, of course, but are not 
especially relevant in terms of the goal of obtaining interoperable Web 
browser implementations.

HTH,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 23 September 2010 13:02:18 UTC