[whatwg] Textarea Wishlist

My application is a web application where XML data elements has been
converted forms elements. So the web form is a representation of XML
data. By editing the web form elements, the user is editing the XML
data.

When the user selects an HTML element in the form, he is really
selecting an XML fragment which is enclosed in that HTML element. The
element may be <fieldset>, or it can be <div> or <span>. And at
different time of implementation I have been using different HTML
element as the container. The user may then issue command to operate
on the XML fragment. So in the earlier example, he is clearing all the
text fields in the XML fragment.

I think this is an interesting case test case on WF2, to see how much
Javascript I can save by using WF2. You will find that most of my
suggestion on WF2 came from experience on this web application.

For example, the discussion on repeat form control interests me
because I am doing deletion and insertion of XML fragment. Currently I
am doing it by the familiar select, cut/copy, paste paradigm as well
as duplicate, clear and more. Will WF2 help me? I need to think about
that.

Another thing that I have been pushing for in WF2 is the use of the
structure of W3C XML schema datatype. I am now working on verfication
of the datatype using Javascript and I think it is working quite well,
that is why  I am suggesting WF2 should use the XML schema datatype
structure.

I will have more suggestion later based on other experience.

A work in progress of the work can be found at www.datamech.com/xmlform/

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:11:23 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Edmund Lai wrote:
> >
> > Give them an inch and they will take a mile, how about on any HTML
> > element, I used fieldset in the example, but sometimes it is all the
> > field elements within a <div> elements.
> 
> I don't understand the use case for being able to get a list of all form
> elements that are children of any arbitrary element.
> 
> Why would you need to know the form element children of a <dfn> element?
> 
> And if the element you really need it for is <div>, then what semantic are
> you missing? (<div> means nothing in HTML, it's just a band-aid element
> for when HTML doesn't have the element you _really_ need, like <section>
> or <navigation>.) We should add the element you are missing, and then add
> |elements| to that element, if it is appropriate.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>

Received on Thursday, 1 July 2004 07:03:59 UTC