RE: AJAX vs. Xforms

 
> For what it's worth, I don't include Chiba and Orbeon in this class. 
> Those I haven't used. I think those projects have problems 
> too, but they're of a different nature. I'm not convinced of 
> the feasibility, usability, or maintainability of a primarily 
> server-side solution; but that's an argument for another thread.
> 

I created a completely client side set of forms for
opening/displaying/editing local XML files. I was able to get them to
open etc on IE with a plugin & firefox with it's plugin, however I was
defeated by the lack of tables within tables in a solid way (ff did this
but the tables were all over the place) & by the lack of an ability to
plugin specific handlers for specific blocks of XML held within a
multi-schema/compound documents (e.g. XHTML as a documentation type
within a large xml document).

Until these 2 areas are dealt with, what you have is a direct "access
forms" replacement with no "rich text wysiwyg" editing & no way to
display an XML tree in a std way (i.e. tables within tables) which is
less than people require (unless you think that people are willing to go
back to plain text &/or handcrafting xhtml markup).

However I did come away from the exercise appreciating the underlying
design of XForms & dearly hoping that these problems can be sorted
rapidly as they make so much sense & would aid me & others like me to
such a great extent vs the way I had to go eventually (local tomcat
instance running a Java/XSLT combination where the expressed to browser
xhtml includes some Javascript to give the element of in browser
functionality required).

Adam

This e-mail is confidential and privileged. If you are not the intended recipient please accept our apologies; please do not disclose, copy or distribute information in this e-mail or take any action in reliance on its contents: to do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. Please inform us that this message has gone astray before deleting it. Thank you for your co-operation.

Received on Monday, 7 November 2005 09:26:22 UTC