XForms 1.1: The event attribute and namespace qualifiation

It is pretty clear that by far the most important aspect of XML events 
used by XForms is the ev:event attribute.  Of course this is why it is 
singled out for required implementation in the conformance section of the 
XForms 1.1 working draft(s).

Side observation: The addition of xforms namespaced datatypes not only 
provides datatypes that are more appropriate for form filling than their 
analogous xsd datatypes, but it also means that form authors don't have to 
namespace qualifiy the datatypes used in the type MIP (provided that the 
default namespace is the one associated with XForms, which would commonly 
be the case within the model).

Side observation: The use of a chameleon namespace is designed to 
eliminate the requirement to namespace qualify XForms content when it 
appears in XHTML. 

Conclusion: XForms 1.1 *really* should actually have an attribute called 
'event' that can be placed anywhere that the attribute bundle "Events" 
currently appears.  It's effect would be to set up an event handler to 
listen for the event named by the attribute's content on the parent of the 
element containing the attribute in the default phase.  And in keeping 
with the conformance section, perhaps XForms 1.1 should (not *really* 
should, but should) have a 'target' attribute so that a given event 
targeted at an identified element can be handled by listeners attached to 
ancestors of the identified element.  Important use cases for this within 
xforms would be handling events targetted at instance and repeat elements. 
 

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