RE: Other controls ? Grid ?

Yes, I was thinking that a constrained device may need to present a
table one column at a time and a way to let the user choose a column.
Or, perhaps it portrays one row at a time with each cell in a list or
spoken.
 
The XForms repeat structures and related actions go a long way towards
fulfilling the basics of accomplishing the same goals as a grid control.
I'll have to do some experimentation to see if I can make my XForms
processor do the same things as my XTab tool. In particular, for HTML
browsers, I need to figure out how to align multiple items per repeated
instance to give a nice tabular appearance. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Kit Davies [mailto:KDavies@categoric.com]
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 10:14 AM
To: Dan Dennedy; DESEYNE Jacques; www-forms@w3.org
Subject: RE: Other controls ? Grid ?



Hi Dan, 

I believe XForms was designed to abstract the interface intention from
it's visual or audible implementation. The problem is that visual forms
are very 2-dimensional so tables fit easily, but voice 'forms' are very
1-dimensional sequential objects. So the question is how do you
represent the intention of a 2-dimensional table in an abstract way. One
way would be a list of lists (which after all is how tabular is normally
represented in XML and XForms is XML). So if tables can be implemented
by lists (and vice versa) and XForms has lists, I suggest that's problem
solved.

Kit 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Dan Dennedy [ mailto:DDennedy@digitalbang.com
<mailto:DDennedy@digitalbang.com> ] 
Sent: 01 February 2002 14:48 
To: Kit Davies; DESEYNE Jacques; www-forms@w3.org 
Subject: RE: Other controls ? Grid ? 


A grid is essentially a table. A table can be as little as a single
column, also known as a list. Are you implying that lists are unusable
in diverse environments? I believe what you are describing is a design
or implementation issue, and not an issue with the paradigm of
information presented in a tabular manner. 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Kit Davies [ mailto:KDavies@categoric.com
<mailto:KDavies@categoric.com> ] 
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 9:19 AM 
To: 'DESEYNE Jacques'; www-forms@w3.org 
Subject: 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
<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 <http://www.swift.com>  
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