On 10/07/2008, at 1:58 AM, Svante Schubert wrote:
Changed the topic and some comments..
Marcin Miłkowski wrote:
Alexandro Colorado pisze:
I think that XForms really need a community makeover. This
feature is highly ignored in the OOo component space.
First we would need more templates to show the power of Xforms.
Also some more documentation on the wiki and even codesnippets
(OOoBasic snippets?, Java).
Yes, same templates to be shown, even better larger scenarios would
be helpful, that's why I asked Jonathon about details of his
interests in XForms.
I agree that much of the problem is that there are no good examples,
particularly above simple data entry forms. I hope to rectify this in
the coming weeks/months to create some better examples that people
will be able to see and utilise, but it is somewhat of a "catch 22"
situation. That is, we need to create more advanced examples, but it
is difficult to create these (simply at least, as defined by the
complete standard) as some of the major features are not implemented
in OOo. We can look at showing workarounds with these more advanced
features using OOoBasic, but it just creates confusion and complexity
that users don't want to see or use.
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?
Well, the simple answer I would have for why we need XForms is that
it correlates directly to much of the real world. Working with
government offices, large business and even small businesses, all are
based around forms. Much of the newer technologies are based around
processes within business and each step of the process often involves
forms in some way. Some obvious examples in real life are invoices,
purchase orders, receipts, inventories, quotes, licenses, medical
records, school records, tax records and the list goes on. What
XForms is designed to do is to allow much of the real world paper
reports into an electronic form that is usable online with the new
XML technologies. XForms offers all the advantages that were
required for this process to happen - validation, calculation, and
data separation, plus more. I think the big issue is people don't
have a way of making this technology easily available in a platform
agnostic, easy to build and use way be it on the desktop (OOo) or
online (Mozilla or other technologies).
Regards
Jonathon
So it's not only about awareness - many xforms examples from a
nice wikibook on xforms simply won't work in OOo as nicely as they
do in Firefox. We need better compliance as well.
Regards,
Marcin
This will hopefully increase the awareness of the tool and then
we could have some real techncial features request.
On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:00:32 -0500, Svante Schubert
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jonathon Coombes wrote:
On 08/07/2008, at 6:40 PM, Svante Schubert wrote:
...
Hi Svante,
I am glad to see that more development is happening with the
associated XML technologies here. I understand that much more
capabilities will be possible with the newer specifications and
better processor in Saxon. My main question is will these new
capabilities be implemented in the XForm part of
OpenOffice.org? My main interest is having not just the xform
backend, but other features such as the xforms:repeat
capabilities and other more advanced operations. Is this
something that will be coming with the new Saxon processor?
Hi Jonathon,
I am a big fan of XForms, but AFAIK for OOo 3.0 there will be no
update on the OOo XForms implementation.
Only the XSLT filter will profit from the new specifications.
But may I ask what you plan to use XForms for, what features you
desire in detail?
Aside of being curious, I would like to have some feedback and
as well some evidence/proof that it is worth to move resources
from other areas of OOo development to XForms.
Kind regards,
Svante
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Jonathon Coombes
OOo Knowledgebase:- http://mindmeld.cybersite.com.au
http://www.cybersite.com.au
http://www.training4linux.com
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