On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 5:31 AM, Stephen Cameron <steve.cameron...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I am trying to find interested parties to help develop an XForms 2.0 engine > under the Apache licence. I know that Open Office has XForms support and > wonder if there are any current plans to do more work in this area? >
Just to be clear -- are you interested in enhancing the XForms support inside of OpenOffice, the XForms processor, UI, etc.? Or is your main interest in making a standalone XForms engine/processor, something like a webkit for XForms 2.0? >From what I've heard from XForms experts, the implementation in OpenOffice has the model, bindings and processing right. But we're neglecting the intent-based controls. We're doing some weird hybrid, even with our down level XForms support. We also lacked (the last time I checked) the ability to POST. The most we could really do was write the resulting XML doc out to disk. In any case, XForms within the context of a word process needs some thinking through, from a UI perspective, to get it right. Writer already has a concept of fields aside from XForms. How these relate is an interesting question. Ditto for what XForms might mean for Calc and Impress. So powerful potential here. But I wonder if the easier approach is to create a webkit-like standalone XForms processor first, under Apache License, which could then be the basis of future enhanced XForms support in OpenOffice, as well as in other applications. (Firefox?) -Rob > XForms 2.0, amongst other things, brings the standard into line with XPath > 2.0 and adds JSON support, it has almost reached recommendation stage. To > date, XForms has not had a significant impact in the browser but there are > browser support emulation projects that can be used very successfully now > (betterForm, Orbeon, XSLTForms). > > The data-driven document model-view binding approach of XForms is in fact > now being used in the browser very successfully (e.g. D3.js, AngularJS), > but via the popular (jQuery) selector approach, rather than via declarative > markup, this might lead to its rediscovery or its demise, who can tell. > > One thing about XForms that remains strong and current is as a form logic > representation means that can be used in many client architectures. This is > my main interest. > > The initial goal is likely to be a 'schema aware' C++ XForms engine (model > and dependancy graph). I think that the Java side is reasonably well > covered by others, but interest in a parallel Java implementation would be > great as well. > > This project is likely to proceed subject to enough help being found, or, > via sponsorship. If the later there are experienced XForms engine > developers who I'm sure could be supported to achieve this goal. > > Regards > Steve Cameron
