tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post7170897614702930296..comments2013-07-18T16:31:43.300+02:00Comments on Craft & Artfulness: Abandoning hope... and XFormswshagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-87782553083118882352013-07-18T16:31:43.300+02:002013-07-18T16:31:43.300+02:00Ha indeed! Thanks.Ha indeed! Thanks.wshagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-78984102004689195672013-07-18T16:29:44.224+02:002013-07-18T16:29:44.224+02:00Yea I cannot go into details as its all in the pap...Yea I cannot go into details as its all in the paper and I've just spent a week working on that, so not that keen to repeat it all here. In a nutshell, XML is a very flexible means to build representations of resources, XForms is a very good way to build an online XML Editor/Reader. I see XForms as being very cheap, potentially. Hand editing XML text should be banned!Steve Cameronhttp://collinta.com.aunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-14201236297605087582013-07-18T16:04:44.478+02:002013-07-18T16:04:44.478+02:00Also, I think that developing ROA is separate from...Also, I think that developing ROA is separate from the choice of client technology, and the use of xforms is far from obvious. It has never spread into the mobile world afaik, whereas OO and MVC design is widely used. I'm certainly no proponent of either, but I'm fed up with programming in angular brackets. A mixed language are far better suited imo (e.g. functional javascript and related).wshagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-92115025752000499932013-07-18T15:50:05.202+02:002013-07-18T15:50:05.202+02:00Hi Steve,
A blog may not be the best place for an ...Hi Steve,<br />A blog may not be the best place for an in-depth discussion of anything, but your comments are quite terse. May I invite you to give your point of view on using xforms in a nutshell? Thanks.wshagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-15186657153097305892013-07-18T15:25:56.550+02:002013-07-18T15:25:56.550+02:00Hi,
We assume a REST API, that is 'resource...Hi,<br />We assume a REST API, that is 'resource' centric.<br />We quote from Kurt Cagle's 2008 Balisage paper at the start of our paper. “REST Oriented Architectures (ROA): Taking a resourceful approach to web data.”<br />But basically saying that XForms is a "data-driven programming" approach that suites data as REST 'resources', including the XForms and Schemas themselves, and relating that to MVC. <br />We are just reporting on ideas that have come from our experiments so far, there is much more to be done. Have a look at Kurt's paper.<br />Steve Cameronhttp://collinta.com.aunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-58426985994636857002013-07-18T11:44:25.990+02:002013-07-18T11:44:25.990+02:00Dear Steve,
As I understand it you propose a data-...Dear Steve,<br />As I understand it you propose a data-centric approach based on xml schema, which in turn generates xforms. I'd argue that in this angular-bracket paradigm the developer still lacks control over specific functionality, for which again you have to rely on the toolset with its inherent standards problem. If you want to stay in that box I believe a debate will proof quite useless. There is a broader problem to address, and that is that of general usability vs controllability.wshagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-78563202628426517232013-07-18T06:53:52.593+02:002013-07-18T06:53:52.593+02:00We'll put some ideas forward about the strengt...We'll put some ideas forward about the strengths and weaknesses of XForms at Balisage 2013.<br />http://www.balisage.net/2013/Program.html#w445r<br />We hope to stimulate some healthy debate!Steve Cameronhttp://www.collinta.com.aunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-8682288955796970012013-07-18T01:17:49.353+02:002013-07-18T01:17:49.353+02:00Why?Why?wshagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-14166723489681116412013-07-18T00:45:44.910+02:002013-07-18T00:45:44.910+02:00Hi, some demos here might be of interest:
http://w...Hi, some demos here might be of interest:<br />http://www.collinta.com.au/projects.xmlSteve Cameronhttp://www.collinta.com.aunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-71936757856395957002013-06-13T08:56:38.447+02:002013-06-13T08:56:38.447+02:00Indeed. But that doesn't even mean XForms was ...Indeed. But that doesn't even mean XForms was ever a good idea. I've just finished my form builder based on JSON Schema, but it could have been XML Schema or RelaxNG based. XForms looks like a schema, but it isn't. JSON Schema has the "format" property for supplying validation info, and in many cases this is enough to infer an form element type (or when taking some liberties with it). I found that you can infer a lot from a schema and data without extending it too much with presentation-related matters or even submission specifics. Given some defaults you don't have to repeat everything in three (or more) places, and that saves you a lot of time. Considering its time-consuming nature XForms is a half-baked product and will never become a decent standard IMO.wshagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-28787676104754290922013-06-13T02:20:29.549+02:002013-06-13T02:20:29.549+02:00I think the issue is the democratic nature of open...I think the issue is the democratic nature of open standards: eventually the standard will be pinned down once enough smart people reach a consensus, but in practice that could take years or possibly never at all. It leaves the innovators the choice of going with an emerging standard hoping it will eventually stick, or going off on a tangent to do it your own way.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-30526045890040080172013-03-01T12:14:52.556+01:002013-03-01T12:14:52.556+01:00Just to be clear, I do share the idealism with the...Just to be clear, I do share the idealism with the XForms people, and I don't care so much about the pecking order in companies. People in the XML community are exceptionally hard-working, perhaps too hard, and I feel very much connected with them. I think their goal is not to create the next best thing, but to balance between re-usability and ease of use. I do agree, however, that at the moment especially the Java community - with Apache looming behind it - is exploding. Too many tools sprawled claiming to be the next best thing in web app development. I'm not fond of beans anyway...<br /><br />Yet through the idealism that was the driving force behind e.g. HTML, a whole new world of development came into being, which otherwise wouldn't have, and I am thankful for that. But the Standards Committee is in trouble. I was amazed to experience at XML Prague last month that so many standards are found to be inadequate. So much so that people are inventing their respective wheels while driving the same car together. XML was found to be inadequate, XSL-FO, JavaScript (both to build clients and to query data), CSS, even RDF... It was the first time I went to such a conference, and was expecting people in the same community to cooperate more. But it seems there is a crisis there, and it's due to this crisis I think, not ego or money, that people decided to take their own course.<br /><br />I think in form design the problem is clear enough, but it comes from the client (i.e. the user). Also I believe that when it comes to re-usability, there will have to be defaults that can be overwritten more easily. So actually I'm vouching for even a more strict standard to begin with. And to repeat myself, it is through the development of XForms that I see how. I'd rather see or efforts combined and not diverge and aim at a standard that is less troublesome... So here you see how stubborn the idealism really is.wshagerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14995777623213184426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4969571649421564307.post-72653310544253449212013-02-28T16:28:43.162+01:002013-02-28T16:28:43.162+01:00It seems to me that anyone promising "program...It seems to me that anyone promising "programming without programmers" is just blowing smoke; he's merely created a new class of programmers. Any technology with sufficient expressive power to do what people want done is going to be isomorphic to COBOL and Ada. A computing scientist could likely show *why* this is so; meanwhile, my experience across three decades suggests strongly that it is so.<br /><br />Every few years something new comes along, promising what nobody will actually say: you can get rid of some workers who command high wages because they are good at something nobody else understands at all. It never happens; you just change out one set of experts for another. The only way to win that game is not to play, and then the competition eats you for lunch.<br /><br />Concerning interaction with the user through forms, perhaps nobody has actually first stated the problem clearly and *then* designed a solution. (Heh, that would require still other expensive experts.) I think such an effort might *begin* with the realizations that you have documented above.<br /><br />Thank you for a thought-provoking posting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com