combining data&presentation and splitting it back

[Balrog]

Hi!
I wonder if anyone could give me some hints/pointers. This is what I'm
trying to do:

say, I have the following:
- data (most likely XML) Example: <colour>red</colour>
- data validation rules (ranges, defaults, etc) (XML, schema?)
Example <colour>
<option>red</opton>
<option>amber</opton>
<option>green</opton>
<default>green</default>
</colour>

- description of data presentation (XML too) Example:
<colour>listbox</colour>

I'd like to generate a document (XTML page or Windows form, for
example), where these three come together to help user to make changes
to the data

After changes are made, I'd like to split the document and extract the
pure data.

So, could you point me to some published work in this area, or share
your thoughts, etc.

thanks and regards

kdv09

 

[Victor Engmark]

Hi!
I wonder if anyone could give me some hints/pointers. This is what I'm
trying to do:

say, I have the following:
- data (most likely XML) Example: <colour>red</colour>
- data validation rules (ranges, defaults, etc) (XML, schema?)
Example <colour>
<option>red</opton>
<option>amber</opton>
<option>green</opton>
<default>green</default>
</colour>

- description of data presentation (XML too) Example:
<colour>listbox</colour>

I'd like to generate a document (XTML page or Windows form, for
example), where these three come together to help user to make changes
to the data

After changes are made, I'd like to split the document and extract the
pure data.

So, could you point me to some published work in this area, or share
your thoughts, etc.

This definitely looks like something to be done by XForms. It is a way
of representing forms (like in HTML, only much more powerful) in XML,
for use with any compliant viewer. You can do exactly what you are
implying in XForms. Check out the following pages:
- Good tutorial: http://xformsinstitute.com/lesson1.php
- Small W3Schools tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/xforms/
- Free O'Reilly book on the subject:
http://xformsinstitute.com/essentials/browse/book.php
- The W3C XForms main page: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/
- The newest W3C recommendation (technical description of the standard):
http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/
- XForms validator: http://xformsinstitute.com/validator/
- DENG viewer (very good, small, open source, needs Macromedia Flash
viewer): http://claus.packts.net/
- Chiba viewer (very good, but needs Java & Tomcat):
http://chiba.sourceforge.net/
- X-Smiles viewer (slow, open source): http://www.xsmiles.org/

 

[Balrog]

......
This definitely looks like something to be done by XForms. It is a way
of representing forms (like in HTML, only much more powerful) in XML,
for use with any compliant viewer. You can do exactly what you are
implying in XForms. Check out the following pages:
- Good tutorial: http://xformsinstitute.com/lesson1.php
- Small W3Schools tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/xforms/
- Free O'Reilly book on the subject:
http://xformsinstitute.com/essentials/browse/book.php
- The W3C XForms main page: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/
- The newest W3C recommendation (technical description of the standard):
http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/
- XForms validator: http://xformsinstitute.com/validator/
- DENG viewer (very good, small, open source, needs Macromedia Flash
viewer): http://claus.packts.net/
- Chiba viewer (very good, but needs Java & Tomcat):
http://chiba.sourceforge.net/
- X-Smiles viewer (slow, open source): http://www.xsmiles.org/

Victor,
thanks a lot for this lead, I'm checking it now. From what I see so
far, it looks promising and to the point:

"- XForms should use XML, both for initial data and submitted data.

- The difference between a blank form and a filled-out form should be
minimal and representable as an XML document.

- Forms should be easy to route to multiple users and locations.

- XForms should separate purpose, presentation, and form data.
Earlier, each section describing an HTML form control had to define
two things: how the control looked, and how it affected the form data
set. XForms should cleanly separate these two aspects.

- XForms should provide the 20 percent of functionality needed to
avoid 80 percent of all forms scripting.

- Popular features such as calculations and validations should be
included in the language.

- XForms should be designed in such a way to encourage those using
HTML forms to switch over by making sure that all the commonly used
features in HTML forms are still possible in XForms." (this is from
O'Reily book you've mentioned)

Thanks again
kdv09