Re: The message action is for messages, not arbitrary dialogs

Hi Elliotte,

I should start by saying that, having heard you speak at the XML 
conference, this response is not entirely directed to you.

Still, it is quite difficult to imagine a scenario in which 'message' 
might legitimately be used in place of 'dialog' and the many examples you 
cited are witnesses to that assertion.

This keeps happening because of the definition of the word message.  A 
message is one-sided.  A dialog would be composed of two or more messages. 
 Like, you sent a message, and now I'm sending a message.  The two 
together are a dialog.

But the most telling is the definition of message that actually appears in 
XForms recommendation.  It is defined to *display* a message *to* a user. 
There is nothing *from* the user that comes back to XForms. 

The content model is defined to be char data and XForms *output*.  The 
spec then allows host language content to be added to message, which is 
*not* the same as saying more *XForms* controls can be added to the 
message content model.  The host language additions are not intended to 
violate the given definition but rather in support of it to allow 
decoration of the message. 

Should some example happen to arise where message is (mis)used to mean 
dialog, that doesn't mean we should accept that as proper usage in XForms.

Cheers,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Workplace Forms Architect and Researcher
Co-Chair, W3C Forms 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





Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu> 
Sent by: www-forms-request@w3.org
12/07/2006 07:46 AM

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ebruchez@orbeon.com
cc
www-forms@w3.org
Subject
Re: The message action is for messages, not arbitrary dialogs







Erik Bruchez wrote:

> o I like explicit over implicit. If you say "message", you mean
>   message. I don't know of any user interface framework that uses the
>   term "message" to also mean "dialog".
>

Google MessageBox. .NET, SWT, and ASP.NET all use this term instead of 
DialogBox. Possibly they think of MessageBox as a restricted form of 
DialogBox just for messages; i.e. an alert. I'm not sure, but certainly 
the word message is sometimes used in place of the word dialog.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
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