RE: XForms UI controls customization with CSS and SVG

> From: Plechsmid Martin [mailto:Martin.Plechsmid@merlin.cz] 
> 
> > Could you give me some details on how do you submit the data 
> > and how do you handle it on the server side? Are you using 
> 'submitInfo' 
> > element? 
> 
> Forms authors write the forms using ordinary XForms (with our private
> extensions when needed), including the submitInfo element 
> (sorry, I forgot
> to include one into the sample). The XForms document is then 
> transformed
> using single xslt transform into ordinary HTML, only a copy of each
> <xforms:instance> is created (we use the IE's <xml> tag for 
> that). When the
> form is submitted, the instance data are serialized and send 
> as a string to
> the server from a hidden <html:form method="POST"> element. The server
> creates an instance of a xml parser and parses this 
> serialized xml. The
> resulting xml DOM is then disposable to all scripts on the 
> server side.

Very interesting. 
If I get it right, you are using JavaScript and IE features to create the
instance data that is posted to the server using a hidden input field on a
form?

> 
> > Did you implement 'event's on the client side?
> 
> Yes, most of them (valueChanged, etc.). The xslt transform on 
> the client
> side needs to build a javascript object model of the 
> <xforms:bind>s etc. in
> order to be able to effectively monitor what's going on in the form.

Are you using IE DOM model as well? How do you handle XPath expressions?

> 
> > Are you using pure XSLT transformation for rendering?
> 
> Pure XSLT on the client side for rendering, but the instance 
> data are filled
> in the resulting HTML form using javascript; and the dynamic 
> behaviour of
> the forms is handled by javascript.

It's like the solution implemented in Mozilla. 

> 
> > There is an effort at Cocoon project aimed to implement an 
> XML-based forms
> > handling and it uses a syntax close to XForms, but some 
> parts are quite
> > difficult or impossible to implement for the server-side 
> processing. 
> 
> I thing that the whole xslt transform as we do it can be done 
> on the server
> side. But the resulting HTML contains and uses lots of scripts, which
> require a powerful client computer to run on, otherwise the 
> user experience
> is not good. The sample form would take about five seconds to 
> initialise,
> but we haven't done any speed optimisations yet, so the delay 
> will hopefully
> reduce.

Anyway, you'll end up with a very complicated JavaScript. Mozilla's JS lib
is about 60K monster (and as I know it's only the 75% of XForms spec). This
is the result of XForms spec beeing very client oriented. I think that
Cocoon's solution moves in the right direction and it's more server
oriented, although implementing most of the cool XForms features will
require also a lot of client side programming.

Thank you very much for all your answers! 

Regards,
  Konstantin

P.S. Ivelin, Torsten, I think that this discussion will be interesting for
you.

> 
> Best regards,
> 		Martin.
>

Received on Thursday, 25 April 2002 08:42:12 UTC