RE: Other controls ? Grid ?

Jacques,

I work for a company writing software which communicates with users over a
wide range of devices/channels. Grids are great for fairly large visual
interfaces, but I find their use becomes more difficult the smaller the
visual area gets. Plus they are completely unusable when working with
non-visual interfaces (voice browsers, etc) which were also part of the
XForms remit.

Modularised XHTML is a better bet. This allows the minimum capabilities
required by a browser to be stated in a form. Then a user/browser can pick
the one best suited for the device, using grids if possible, or some other
design if not.

Kit

-----Original Message-----
From: DESEYNE Jacques [mailto:jacques.deseyne@swift.com]
Sent: 01 February 2002 08:46
To: www-forms@w3.org
Subject: Other controls ? Grid ?


All, 
From my lecture of the current Last Call draft (I've discovered XForms only
very recently), it would seem that an XForms specification is not really
intended to provide a framework for generic User Interfaces. It lacks
several controls commonly found in widely-used GUI "foundation classes". 
Among other things, one 'control' we frequently need is a kind of grid or
table, to present a set of tuples. In principle, it would be possible to
mimic a grid by repeat structures, but the appearance and behaviour will be
slightly different, in the best case. Of course, one could always envision
to make her/his own non-standard extensions... 
Maybe I am missing something and I should apologise for not having read some
requirements document, but what was the motivation to limit the defined
controls to more or less what is already available in HTML forms ? 
Best regards, 
-- 
Jacques Deseyne 
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (S.W.I.F.T.) 
SWIFTAlliance WebStation Development Team - IT/Interfaces 
http://www.swift.com 
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