[JDEV] forms

Wed Oct 3 10:54:46 CDT 2001

Hello,

IMO, the forms JEP are incredibly simplistic.
I honestly don't see how one could build a decent form (I mean the layout)
with the scheme you suggested, only a long list of input fields/boxes/etc.
Why shouldn't Jabber use XHTML/CSS to display forms? That way it fits into
Jabber's XML tags and we can guarantee forms will look (almost) identical on
every user's display.

btw, why don't you include an editable pull-down box in the JEP? (I wish
they had put them into the HTML spec!)
Oh, I think you left out file-selection boxes ... those can be quite useful.

Bye,
Sebastiaan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Saint-Andre" <stpeter at jabber.org>
To: <forms-jig at jabber.org>
Cc: <jdev at jabber.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 5:48 PM
Subject: [JDEV] forms

> As I was taking notes at JabberCon, one theme that kept popping into my
> mind was the need for strong forms support in Jabber. Just as the World
> Wide Web consisted mostly of reading hyperlinked documents (albeit
> eventually with some flashy graphics and multimedia stuff) until web
> developers figured out how to offer interactive forms and therefore
> "weblications" like searching the web and ordering books online, so I
> think Jabber will consist mostly of IM (and a few related applications)
> until we have Jabber forms that will enable developers to create more
> robust "Jablications" like _______ (you fill in the blank :).
>
> I don't have any answers or specific proposals to offer, but I'd certainly
> like to get the discussion going. Ryan Eatmon put together a proposed spec
> for Jabber forms a number of months ago, and even converted it into JEP
> format, but there's been minimal discussion of it and I think that's what
> we need to move forward. The JEP can be found here:
>
> http://foundation.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0004.html
>
> More specifically, I'm wondering if there is value in looking at the W3C
> spec for XForms. Here are some links of interest for that angle:
>
> http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2001/09/05/xforms.html
> http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2001/09/26/xforms.html
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xforms-20010828/
>
> There are 12 people on the forms-jig mailing list and 1050 people on the
> JDEV list. I invite those of you who are interested in building more
> advanced data interchange over Jabber (as opposed to simple IM) to join
> the forms-jig list so we can kick-start this discussion:
>
> http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/forms-jig/