Svante Schubert pisze:
Well, if you're composing anything than a trivial data entry form,
XForms implementation in OOo is seriously crippled due to the lack of
xforms:repeat as you cannot really edit any XML document that contains
recursive structures. Otherwise, you could, for example, implement an
xforms-based editor of ODF files - a kind of WordPerfect Reveal Codes
on steroids ;)
;-)
We have two basic scenarios:
1) Form editing (lacking of usability)
2) Form usage
We might start even earlier in asking ourselves, why do we need forms
(and as implementation detail XForms).
What I am asking you (with an answer in my mind), what is the great
benefit of XForms, why should we go further with it with OOo?
Actually, my idea was to implement an XForms-based form for editing
grammar checking rules in LanguageTool. A they're basically XML
documents it should be easy - in Firefox, I only have to supply a schema
and design a form. But as these files need recurrent structures (for
obvious reasons: natural language is recursive as well), it turned out
to be very hard and not worth the effort - I would have to serialize
nested structures using XSLT, then supply them in a specially built
xform document (again, using XSLT). Compared to a single trivial file
with a schema reference and several UI elements it looked like overkill.
I think XForms promise something like a tool for creating UI for data
entry for any XML-based documents or databases. As more tools are
starting to use XML-based files to exchange data, XForms could be really
useful. Two years ago, when I tried to find a decent XForms
implementation for any web browser, it wasn't that easy - now there's a
plenty of them. That shows that it's generally assumed that XForms can
slowly replace HTML forms on the web - and they should replace document
templates for data entry in OpenOffice.org.
Cheers,
Marcin
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
