Re: XForms not enough

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob McDougall" <RMcDouga@JetForm.com>
To: <www-forms@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2000 8:00 PM
Subject: RE: XForms not enough


> Thirdly, you seem to wish to write fully featured applications utilizing
> just a browser in the near future.  While that's a laudable goal, one has
to
> walk before one can run.  The technologies you cite (XSchema and XUL) are
> intended for a development audience.  That's not the majority of web
> authors.  The majority of web authors are HTML people.  XForms is aimed
> squarely at this majority.  The HTML authors don't have that ability to do
> rich forms without XForms.  The development audience always has
JavaScript,
> as painful as it sometimes is.  Their need (in my opinion) is not as
great.

Rob, I agree with your "walk before you run" argument. I also agree with
HTML, and not XUL/XSchema/xxx being the lingua franca of the typical web
author.

There is one thing that I am missing very much on the web, today. It's also
a thing that will satisfy some of Joe's needs. It also has a connection with
what the X-Forms group is working on.

What am I talking about? HTML components. Custom tags.
What (IMHO) would fit very well in today's web architecture is a way to
build new HTML tags out of existing tags. Attach behaviour using ECMAScript.
Style them using CSS. In other words, re-using all the common things of
to-day.

Both Microsoft and Netscape have proposed HTML component systems (Behaviours
c.q. XBL) to the W3C. If any of the members of this list know of any W3C
activity in this area, please point me to the right place.(if there is one)

I like X-Forms as an incremental improvement over HTML forms. But, as far as
I see, that's not the thing Joe is asking for.

Regards,
Taras

Received on Friday, 9 June 2000 14:22:37 UTC