XForms suggestions

Suggestions for additional options for XForms

I have been reading the
XForms 1.0: Data Model
W3C Working Draft 06 April 2000
http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms-datamodel/
and I am favorably impressed.

My organization has an existing web-based validating
XML editor that is written in javascript and perl.
The adoption of XForms by Netscape and Internet Explorer
might allow us to greatly simplify our code, and the
data validation options in XForms are more powerful than
what we have at present.  However, we would need a
couple of extra hooks in order to blend our software
with the proposed XForms standard.

To see our existing xml editor, go to
http://daacl.esd.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/MDEDIT/access.pl
and log in as "guest", then do a
File/New
using the select list in the top frame.
This presents a form similar to what a browser supporting
XForms would show.  Note that every label on the page is
actually a link to a glossary.  I don't see any way to do
that in the present XForms standard.
   Now click on the link "(show pick list at top)" after the
"Team ID".  The frame immediately above the form shows the
pick list.  Select one of them.  It automatically fills
in several xml items, not just the Team ID.
   I don't expect this feature, or several others that we
have, to be found in a general purpose editor.  For example,
the values shown in certain pick lists sometimes depend on
the other values already selected.  But I think that I could
blend our interface with yours if you added the following
new features:

A facet called "initialize" or "onClick", similar to "validate",
but which calls a javascript function onClick instead of onBlur.
I would use this to trigger the rebuilding of my "smart picklists",
which are dynamically constructed.

A way to insert a user-defined link into the form.
A way to insert a user defined comment that appears on the form.
The syntax might be something like
<group name="Data_Set_Restrictions"
        link="javascript:top.newWindow('glossary.html#data_set_restrictions')"
        linklabel="help"
        comment="If not Public the author must configure his web server to 
enforce any restrictions">

Also, it'd be nice to be able to have the XML sit in a separate file, and
include it with something like an external entity reference.

Thanks
Stan Attenberger/sea@ornl.gov                    ___
DAAC:423-241-5929(rolls over to voice mail)     ('v')
1507, rm 208                                   ((   ))
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Received on Monday, 26 June 2000 11:50:29 UTC