RE: W3C XForms vs Alternative XML UI Language Formats

Gerald,

You are spot on that XForms has within it an "XML UI language". As it
happens, it's one of the only languages in your list that can truly claim
that; most of the others are "XML GUI languages" or "XML widget languages"
since they deal in the main with presentation to the user in a way that is
strongly bound to desktops in a windowing environment.

But just to clarify, Raman's point about XForms being "an architecture" was
to emphasise that XForms' real power comes from its model - what sometimes
gets called 'the engine'. Specifying GUI (or widget) languages is not
exactly difficult, but defining a 'spreadsheet'-style calculation engine,
that fires events to the front-end and maintains CSS state, allows for XML
data manipulation such as submission and validation, and all without
scripting - now that's a "user interface language".

Best regards,

Mark


PS Keep up the excellent work - the "XUL Challenge" is a great initiative
(and I'm quite enjoying it!).


Mark Birbeck
CEO and CTO
x-port.net Ltd.

Download our XForms processor from
http://www.formsPlayer.com/



> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-forms-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-forms-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Gerald Bauer
> Sent: 26 April 2004 17:53
> To: www-forms@w3.org
> Cc: tvraman@almaden.ibm.com
> Subject: Re: W3C XForms vs Alternative XML UI Language Formats
> 
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> > It should be made clear that XForms is *not* a XML
> > UI language
> 
>   Well, XForms is clearly a XML UI language.
> 
>   1) XForms is XML.
>   2) XForms includes tags for widgets (e.g. <trigger>, 
> <textarea>, <range> etc.)
> 
> > -- XForms is about an XML Forms architecture that
> > uses an XML
> > model that can be bound to multiple UI languages
> > --- including XHTML. 
> 
>   I understand that W3C XForms needs a hosting
> language and is not a standalone markup language.
> 
>   Please, note that you can also bind alternative XML
> UI languages to different toolkits (e.g. Swing,
> Eclipse, Windows Forms, etc.) or even other markup
> languages (e.g. SVG, XHTML, etc.). 
> 
> > In fact the real XUL challenge
> > for Mozilla/xul fans to bind an XUL UI to an XForms
> > model.
> 
>   Just to clarify the XUL challenge is about XML UI
> languages (including XForms) not about Mozilla XUL. I
> use XML UI language like XML schema language as a
> generic term e.g. there are many more XML schema
> languages than W3C's XML schema language. The same
> goes for XML UI languages. Mozilla's XML UI language
> (XUL) is just one of many XML UI languages.
> 
>   - Gerald
> 
> -------------------
> Gerald Bauer
> Open XUL Alliance - A Rich Internet For Everyone | 
> http://xul.sourceforge.net  
> XUL News Wire | http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.xul.announce
> 
> ______________________________________________________________
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Received on Monday, 26 April 2004 16:49:40 UTC