RE: relevant and required

Hi Andrew, hello Rodrigue,

my appolgies should I have answered the wrong question.

As a reply to Andrew's remark: it is well possible that non-relevant
form fields are hidden, but it is not the only way to represent that.
Another representation is to essentially gray out the option and make it
inaccessible. In that case, it is still "there", but it is not active.
One advantage or greying the control out is that the arrangement of the
widgets on the page is not significantly changed when the widget in
question becomes relevant, whereas hiding it would require a
re-shuffling of screen real estate.

Of course all this applies to visual rendering only, and for example a
future voice interface may have to behave differently. That is the
reason why the spec says: "The XForms User Interface _MAY_ indicate that
should the form control become relevant, a value would be required."
(emphasis mine)

Again: Does this help?

Josef

-----Original Message-----
From: AndrewWatt2001@aol.com [mailto:AndrewWatt2001@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 11:52 AM
To: www-forms@w3.org; xforms@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: relevant and required


In a message dated 29/10/01 10:32:38 GMT Standard Time,
vaudrodr@students.hevs.ch writes: 



I don't understand the difference between "... relevant=false
required=true ..." and "... relevant=false required=false ..." specified
in the last WD. 
The difference specified in the WD is that, in the first case, "the
XForms User Interface may indicate that should the form control become
relevant, a value would be required". I don't know why. 

Rodrigue Vaudan 



Rodrigue, 

I think your question is a good one. Conceptually, the difference
between the two combinations of attributes is, I hope, clear. 

The difficulty, I think, arises from the comment, "The XForms User
Interface may indicate that should the form control become relevant, a
value would be required.". How, even if it were sensible, can you
indicate that a *hidden* form control might become required if it were
to be made relevant by some user action? Even if you can, in what
circumstances would it be relevant to indicate such a thing? 

I think that the attempt, using the sentence "The XForms User Interface
may indicate that should the form control become relevant, a value would
be required." to make the entries in the lower row of the table
different from each other is a mistake, arising from the perceived need
to differentiate the options in a table. 

It is simpler, in my view, that we accept that a non-relevant form
control is hidden, whether or not it is "required". The difference in
concept need not be presented visually, as far as I can see. 

My conclusion? The sentence in the table isn't "relevant". Deletion is
"required". :) 

Andrew Watt

Received on Monday, 29 October 2001 06:00:29 UTC