Re: XForms Talk Slides Plus Mini Critique Online

Gerald,

It is a constructive thing that there is critical discussion of XForms. 
Serious discussion is the best way to make XForms 1.0 the best that it can 
be.

BTW feel free to post to the XForms mailing list on Yahoogroups.com too.
http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/XForms

In a message dated 02/04/2003 04:25:54 GMT Daylight Time, luxorxul@yahoo.ca 
writes:


>   I gave a VanX talk last week entitled "The Future of
> the Web: Rich Clients, Rich Browsers, Rich Portals: A
> Look at XUL, XForms, Curl, Rebol and other emerging
> technologies" that includes a brief intro to XForms
> and an XForms critique too.
> 

I am interested in your emphasis on rich clients. I was raising that 
possibility on the XML-Dev mailing list a few months back and the push from 
others was definitely that rich clients were a thing of the past in many 
situations.

>   Here's a summary of the "What's wrong with XForms?"
> slide:
> 
>   * Watch your language - plain-English, please; no
> academese or jaron-filled mumbo jumbo 

Realistically, most W3C specifications are like that.

If you have specific suggestions then you should post those to the 
www-forms-editor list. See 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-forms-editor/


>   * Markup bloat; don't overdo tags; allow attribute
> shortcuts


What, specifically, did you have in mind in making that point?

>   * XML fever; don't replace scripting with bloated
> markup 

Actually, I see this as being potentially one of the most interesting parts 
of XForms.

Declarative programming is interesting, at least to me.

What advantages do you feel that scripting offers?


>   * Drop namespaces; ditch the useless bloat from core
> markup

If namespaces were dropped then, at a first thinking, XForms would fall to 
pieces as would more than a few recent W3C XML specifications.

What would you suggest in their place?



> 
>   Full story @
> http://vamphq.com/talk/vanx-mar-2003/slides.html
> 
>   I also might add that I'm going to add XForms
> support (sanitized and cleaned-up) to Luxor over the
> next couple of months.

If the "real" i.e. W3C XForms is to be the best it can be then it would be 
better, at least in my view, if you posted specific suggestions to 
www-forms-editor. Although whether the WG is in listening mode remains to be 
seen.

Andrew Watt