RE: WWW2004 XForms Talk Slides by Steven Pemberton Now Online

Hi Gerald,

And your point is? I was looking out for your 'reality check', but I missed
it.

Anyway, to your two points: (a) that the suitability of new technologies is
measured by online voting, and (b) the suitability of a new technology is
measured by whether those with a vested interest in not adopting that
technology, choose to endorse it.


ON POLLS
Surely someone of your experience isn't saying that the traction of a
technology is based on how many people respond to a poll? XForms will either
solve a problem that users have, or it won't. Of course you and I can argue
into the night over the syntax and whether there are features missing, but
the proof of the pudding, as they say ....

So, Steven's point was not to say, look everyone, XForms is taking off, and
it's proved by companies A and B - in his presentation he was saying that we
have a list of real companies with real problems that XForms is solving
today. In parentheses, it's no small thing that the UK insurance industry
has voted to adopt XForms in place of their own form language, ISML. Their
'trade association' Origo represents a lot of very large organisations, many
of them household names. And I'm sorry if they were a bit too busy to vote
on your poll.


ON BROWSER ENDORSEMENT
I don't get this one either. You say that none of the browser builders
endorse XForms, but so what? Browser-building is a dangerous business, and I
wouldn't bet your house on any of the current monolithic browsers being the
leaders in 5 years time (especially when one of them has said they won't be
developing their browser any further).

The reality is that there are now many browsers being built for many
platforms. Oracle and Novell, for example, have built their own XForms-aware
browsers to work with their server products. That's probably far more
significant for the future of XForms than Opera's lack of support. In fact,
if you put aside the fact that Opera have found it difficult to implement
XForms, but easier to bad mouth it, then you are only really talking about
Microsoft and Mozilla.

As far as Microsoft are concerned the browser war is over - they beat off
Netscape, and so they don't need to do any more, and we won't see anything
from them now, until Longhorn. Even then it will use their own language,
XAML.

And as for Mozilla - well IBM have already announced that they are going to
build in native XForms support!

Add to all this that Sun are putting XForms support into OpenOffice, and
then remind yourself that XForms only became a full standard in October last
year, and I think Steven may well be right!

One final point; you say that the W3C is not vendor-led, and your *proof* is
that neither Opera or Microsoft have adopted XForms. Well, it's not my job
to defend the W3C, but when you ignore the fact that XForms *is* supported
by Oracle, IBM, Sun, PureEdge, Novell, Xerox and others, you leave yourself
open to accusations that you might not be making very logical arguments.

Regards,

Mark


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: 27 May 2004 05:41
> To: www-forms@w3.org
> Subject: WWW2004 XForms Talk Slides by Steven Pemberton Now Online
> 
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
>   Steven Pemberton who chairs the W3C HTML and XForms
> Working Groups has posted the slides for last week's
> WWW2004 talk about XForms in New York online.
> 
>   In the "XForms 1.0: en route to success slide"
> Steven writes:
> 
>    On the day of release there were more
> implementations than any other W3C specification on
> the day of release, ever.
> 
>   Around 30 implementations announced so far,
> including plugins, native implementations, proxies,
> 'zero install' implementations, a voice-browser, an
> editor, a validator...
> 
>   Major companies and industries are already using
> XForms (e.g. Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Frauenhofer, Daiwa
> - a Japanese Bank, the British Life Insurance
> industry... and more I can't tell you about yet: watch
> this space!)
> 
> 
>    So much about the hype. As far as I know not a
> single browser vendor (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Opera,
> Mozilla, Konqueror, etc.) has endorsed W3C XForms.
> Ironically, the W3C is supposed to be a vendor
> consortium. 
> 
>    Anyway, for a reality check I invite you to check
> out the Richmond Post poll asking "What is your XForms
> Player of choice?" online @ 
> http://xul.sourceforge.net/post/2004/05/poll_what_is_your_xfor
ms_player_of_choice.html

   So far only about a hundred people have bothered to
vote although the poll is now up for more than a week
and I've promoted it *twice* on half a dozen
mailinglists including xml-dev, www-forms, and more.

   Is XForms the next big thing?  

   According to Steven:

   It looks like it is going to be the year of XForms.

   XForms has hit a nerve, and is supplying a need:
industry reponse has been incredible.


   More @ http://www.w3.org/2004/Talks/05-19-steven-XForms-WWW2004

     - Gerald

-------------------
Gerald Bauer
Open XUL Alliance - A Rich Internet For Everyone |
http://xul.sourceforge.net    


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Received on Thursday, 27 May 2004 05:46:45 UTC