Re: XForms contribution? (Repost)

[joern turner]

This message seems to have not arrived the list - Therefore i try it again...


Hello Ivelin,

glad that we finally managed to get in contact. i hope we can help here
and there.

i quickly scanned through your XMLForm tutorial to get familiar with it
and i think there are some really interesting ideas in it.

Your Schematron package looks very good, but you mentioned that you
validate 'currently through Schematron'. Does this imply that this is
not a final decision? Could you also validate datatypes (XML Schema
types) with it?

i also agree with you that the use JXPath will help a lot in
sharing/merging code/ideas.

Our current goal is to release a refactored and cleaned up Chiba1 0.7.
So Chiba1 is still our main development focus with eventual additions to
Chiba2 proposed architecture (one builds on the other). But i would be
happy to discuss these proposals with the community.

After that release (if we had done our job right) we planned to
integrate Chiba into Cocoon as a kind of component. excuse, i'm still
not skilled enough in Cocoon to decide how and where - Action,
Transformer, something else? Any hints would be very welcome.

Would that be of any interest for you?

And a last question. Do you intend to implement XForms calculations?
Are there any ideas/documents about that already or did i miss something?

definitely have to spend more time with Cocoon and XMLForm but i hope we
can approach it in steps ;)

Joern

Ivelin Ivanov wrote:
> Joern,
>
> I don't remember why I left with the impression that Chiba relies on
> JavaScript. I am glad that it doesn't.
>
> It is also good that both projects use JXPath for referencing the data model
> (be it DOM, JavaBean or mixed).
>
> XMLForm has a built in validation concept, currently through Schematron,
> which is convenient for gradual validation (wizard type).
>
> Timing seems to be good. Since you are planning on a new architecture for
> Chiba 2, and the Cocoon community is always open for good ideas, we can
> definitely help each other out.
>
>
> As far as my attempts to work with Chiba people is concerned, below are some
> past emails from the Cocoon mailing list. I don't have copies from the Chiba
> list. This is of course irrelevant now. Let's try to see how can we work
> together this time around.
>
> http://www.mail-archive.com/cocoon-dev@;xml.apache.org/msg13653.html
> http://www.mail-archive.com/cocoon-dev@;xml.apache.org/msg12676.html
> http://www.mail-archive.com/cocoon-dev@;xml.apache.org/msg11174.html
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Ivelin
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "joern turner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Ivelin Ivanov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: "Ulrich Nicolas Lissé" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Saturday, November 02, 2002 5:13 PM
> Subject: Re: XForms contribution?
>
>
> Hello Ivelin,
>
> first of all, thanks for the quick response and your interest in Chiba.
>
> But there are some statements in your mail that really astonished me:
> you stated that you tried to contact us, but such a mail never reached
> me or the mailinglist. I answer all requests and try to give anyone
> feedback to whatever questions about Chiba. And, of course, i would have
> been happy about such a request!
>
> No criticism here, just try to clear this up.
>
> Another statement of yours let me suspect that you eventually might have
> mixed up Chiba with some other framework/project?: Chiba does *not* rely
> on Javascript - in contrary, it lives in a pure server-side java
> web-application and does not rely on any client intelligence.
>
> But besides these misunderstandings i think that Cocoon (or better
> XMLForm) and Chiba have a lot in common:
> - Like XMLForm, Chiba is client-independent, although we currently only
> support plain-html (without javascript) it's 'only' a matter of writing
> XSLT stylesheets to transform for other clients.
> - Like XMLForm Chiba does not support events, but it supports Actions
> (as far as they make sense on serverside)
> - we also try to adhere syntactically to the spec and by now have
> updated to the last working draft
> - we also take the freedom to leave out features that still feel 'weak'
> namely Events and Dependency Graph evaluation. We try to build a
> processor that behaves as defined by the spec without necessarily taking
> the way the spec proposes.
> - we build on common Apache libs like Xerces, Xalan, JXPath, Commons
>
> The Schema2XForms generator is currently undergoing adaption to the
> latest spec and comes with a supporting Ant task which allows to use it
> in build scripts. I think it could be a very helpfull tool whenever you
> have some existing XML Schemas and need a way to edit associated data.
> It's developed under Chiba2 which is planned as a XForms processor
> generator framework.
>
> i've had no deep look at XMLForm up to now (have to change that
> quickly). That may excuse my wrong term 'databean' here. i just had the
> impression, that instance-data in XMLForm are normally JavaBeans that
> hold the actual data (therefore 'databean').
>
> Chiba uses DOM for instance-data but we plan to abstract this part to
> support arbitrary datamodels.
>
> I'm really looking forward to discussing things further on Cocoon-dev
> and also would like to crosspost messages to our list if you don't mind.
>
> Joern
>
>
>
> Ivelin Ivanov wrote:
>
>>Hi Joern,
>>
>>It is funny that when we started writing XMLForm for Cocoon,
>>Chiba already existed. I tried to contact the Chiba group multiple times
>
> for
>
>>a possible cooperation, but apparently there wasn't much interest.
>>
>>You are correct that XMLForm is designed for client independence. It will
>>work just as well for PDAs, PCs and cell phones, because it has no heavy
>>requirements for the client.
>>In fact there already is a contribution for VoiceXML.
>>
>>If I understand correctly Chiba heavily relies on JavaScript to simulate
>>XForms events and actions.
>>
>>Cocoon XMLForm sacrifices XForms events and actions in favor of universal
>>applicability.
>>We simply try to comply with the XForms tagnames and model referencing,
>>without going too far into implementing XForms features which have yet to
>
> be
>
>>proven.
>>For example if you had XUL or XForms capable client you can easily
>
> translate
>
>>XMLForm documents into any of the two grammars.
>>
>>
>>XML Schema -> XForms is an interesting idea which has been discussed on
>
> the
>
>>Cocoon list. Nothing has materialized though.
>>
>>Since XMLForm is much simpler of a framework than Chiba, I would like to
>>hear your ideas of upgrading Cocoon to a better form handling framework.
>>
>>Oh, one more thing. I am not sure I understand the comment about the
>>DataBean approach. XMLForm supports JavaBeans, DOM and mixed data models.
>>
>>
>>And if you don't mind I will take this discussion to the cocoon-dev list.
>
> I
>
>>think others will be interested to participate.
>>
>>
>>Looking forward to your ideas.
>>
>>
>>Ivelin
>>
>>
>>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "joern turner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>To: "Ivelin Ivanov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Cc: "Ulrich Nicolas Lissé" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 6:38 PM
>>Subject: XForms contribution?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Hello Ivelin,
>>>
>>>i'm very new to Cocoon but follow the development for quite a while and
>>>after struggling for years with servers of all kinds i now feel to have
>>>found the right one. Cocoon is really cool and i plan my future with it ;)
>>>
>>>please excuse that i took the direct way - wasn't sure if this topic
>>>would be correctly addressed at the cocoon mailing-lists (which one?).
>>>From following the discussions on the list i realized that you're
>>>tightly involved with the XMLForm module in Cocoon, so i hope i bother
>>>the right one ;)
>>>
>>>i am the founder of the Chiba project
>>>(http://sourceforge.net/projects/chiba) which tries to implement a
>>>XForms conformant processor for today browsers (even scriptless ones).
>>>The intend is to provide a bean-like component which may be integrated
>>>into arbitrary web-applications and supports a wide range of clients. It
>>>uses a DOM/XSLT approach. Next release (0.7) is scheduled for November.
>>>In paralell we work on a Schema2XForms generator which takes XML Schema
>>>and generates complete XForms with sensible defaults for the UI.
>>>
>>>The idea to integrate Chiba into Cocoon is not new in our group and has
>>>already successfully been done with a former version.
>>>
>>>XMLForm seems to have a different (DataBean) approach, but nevertheless
>>>we would be happy to contribute our experience and code to the Cocoon
>>>project. if you're interested, please have a look at our project page
>>>and tell me what you think. Don't expect too much from the web-site but
>>>i will be happy to answer all your questions.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>
>>>Joern Turner
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>





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