RE: XForms interoperability issues in heterogeneous devices

Hmm? https://projects.developer.nokia.com/XFormsJ2ME opened fine just now. The http://www.xfolite.org URL had an old forwarding address and did not work, fixed it now (and the broken Wikipedia link).

Nokia data gathering (https://projects.developer.nokia.com/ndg) is also using XForms. In an older version (3.04 Brave Batian) they were using Xfolite as the mobile XForms engine. From a quick look at the sources and docs it looks like they have simplified the mobile client (i.e. it only provides limited XForms support; they might even use another format when sending the form to mobile) and are no longer using Xfolite. They are, however, apparently still using XForms as a form description language on server side. You may want to check that out as well.

At the time it was created (2010), Xfolite was the most complete open-source mobile XForms implementation that I know of. The engine provides pretty complete support for Xforms 1.0 Basic, with some XForms 1.1 features supported as well. Other clients may have appeared since then, I haven't kept up.

In its current form, the implementation has a fairly good engine part (more feature complete than JavaRosa, for instance) but the UI is not very mature. The UI is also written for non-touch Java (J2ME), so the UI part is a dead end unless you are targeting very low-end devices (though having a fully featured XForms processor on an EUR 50 phone is pretty neat in my opinion). It may or may not work on touch devices that have J2ME (such as the new Nokia Asha line), but I suspect the user experience won't be great in any case.

Unfortunately I never had time to develop Xfolite to a release stage. Not that getting it running would be that hard if you can find a compatible version of the J2MEPolish framework. Currently the project is effectively abandoned, at least until such time when I can have hobbies again.

BR,
     --Oskari

________________________________
From: ext Willem van der Westhuizen [wavdwesthuizen@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2012 8:35 PM
To: Suyesh Amatya
Cc: markku.laine@aalto.fi; steven.pemberton@cwi.nl; www-forms@w3.org
Subject: Re: XForms interoperability issues in heterogeneous devices

Hi Suyesh,

I have been unable to open any link to the xfolite implementation.

For completeness, there is also some implementation called openRosa, with an implementation in http://code.google.com/p/opendatakit/.
However, this is only a subset of the xforms spec for social survey functionality in mind.

Regards

Willem

On 2012/10/21 11:48 AM, Suyesh Amatya wrote:
Hi all,

Is it just Xfolite? I couldn't find any articles or research papers/publications regarding my questions.

Regards,
Suyesh Amatya

> From: markku.laine@aalto.fi<mailto:markku.laine@aalto.fi>
> To: wavdwesthuizen@gmail.com<mailto:wavdwesthuizen@gmail.com>
> CC: Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl<mailto:Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl>; www-forms@w3.org<mailto:www-forms@w3.org>; hisuyesh@hotmail.com<mailto:hisuyesh@hotmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:38:39 +0000
> Subject: Re: XForms interoperability issues in heterogeneous devices
>
> Hi Willem and others,
>
>
> Here is a link to an old project called Xfolite that you might find useful:
> https://projects.developer.nokia.com/XFormsJ2ME
>
> Best regards,
> +Markku Laine
>
> On 17.10.2012, at 22.52, Willem van der Westhuizen wrote:
>
> > Hi Steven,
> >
> > We are also particularly keen to find out about xforms implementations that would run natively on a smartphone (ie. can work off-line)
> >
> > Willem
> >
> > On 2012/10/17 05:41 PM, Steven Pemberton wrote:
> >> On Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:43:55 +0200, Suyesh Amatya <hisuyesh@hotmail.com><mailto:hisuyesh@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>> Can you guys refer to me some links/articles or books regarding "XForms interoperability issues in heterogeneous devices".
> >>> Regards,Suyesh
> >>
> >> I know of work on this, but I know of no publications on it. If you need any help or advice, please just ask.
> >>
> >> Best wisher,
> >>
> >> Steven Pemberton
> >>
> >>
> > <wavdwesthuizen.vcf>
>
>
>