Re: Dynamic @action attribute on xforms:submission

Hi Stefano,

For years and years, the XForms working group has had technical 
discussions that include weekly telecons, quarterly face to face meetings 
and, most important to your question, somewhere between 300 to 600 emails 
per quarter.

These discussions have largely taken place on the working group list, 
which is not public. This has allowed us to openly discuss all 
possibilities without members of the community making assumptions about 
the emails "speaking on behalf of the group" or taking them as anything 
more than ongoing dialog as we try to figure out what the best course 
really should be.

However, as of the last face to face meeting, our working group decided 
that it would be worth the trouble of having to deal with 
misunderstandings if we could begin to communicate out to the community 
exactly how much thought is really going into the XForms recommendation. 
As I said, 300+ emails per quarter about technical issues is a lot of 
thought.  So, we have decided to start holding our technical discussions 
on the public list.

A second benefit we hope to achieve is increased community participation 
in the technical discussions themselves.  We think this will generate more 
good ideas, but also it will help a wider audience understand more about 
why we sometimes don't take a direction that might seem like a good idea 
on the surface.

This is a new process to which we are just transitioning.  So if you see 
no prior discussions on the public archive on a topic, this by no means 
implies the issue has not been discussed.  Rest assured, we are a very 
active group and we have discussed, rediscussed and triple discussed many 
issues, including the one in which you are currently interested.  And you 
will really be seeing a lot more out of us as you continue to see our 
technical discussions on the mailing list.

Just remember, it's not a group direction until a resolution has occurred. 
 Before that, we're all just hard-working community members who are trying 
to build a great language for our community, and each of us is quite 
capable of being completely wrong.  Moreover, you may often see a solution 
that is technically beautiful and completely right, but we don't resolve 
to use it because it has dire implications for analogous features 
somewhere else in the language or because it's just too hard to implement 
correctly in a timely fashion. 

Then, even the resolutions only end up in working drafts, and it's not a 
recommendation until the W3C signs off on it :-)

Best regards,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Senior Product Architect/Research Scientist
Co-Chair, W3C XForms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com  http://www.ibm.com/software/

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer





Erik Bruchez <ebruchez@orbeon.com> 
Sent by: www-forms-request@w3.org
04/20/2006 08:52 AM

To
www-forms@w3.org
cc

Subject
Re: Dynamic @action attribute on xforms:submission







Stefano Debenedetti wrote:

> One question though: does this mean that when we see no technical 
discussion by WG members on the public list it is because there is no 
ongoing technical discussion whatsoever? By the way, when did you decide 
so?

Early April or late March. We blogged about this:

http://www.orbeon.com/blog/2006/04/03/w3c-xforms-working-group-going-public/


-Erik