[whatwg] Comparison of XForms-Tiny and WF2

[Klotz, Leigh]

Uh huh, a last call comment posted 3 years after the group was formed,
when Opera, a W3C member, had not participated in the development of
charter, requirements, working draft, candidate recommendation, or
proposed recommendation.   Opera certainly has its own business
interests to protect, and I can understand how with its business built
around IE 5 bug compatibility for cell phones, any spec that deviates
from incremental extensions to that is a threat to both its intellectual
property and a promised lowering of barriers to entry to its market.  

If Opera had wanted to engage, it would have done so in the many
previous years, and if Opera had concerns about the direction of XForms
(or even XHTML (or even XML)) it would have done so at the charter and
requirements document stages.  Not doing so was a business decision, and
I can't argue with that.  But please don't confuse those business
decisions with technical objections, of which there were none expressed.

So, on that note, as I said before, I'm pleased that there is a
potential for engaging on work with Web Forms 2.0, XForms Tiny and
XForms to develop a consistent set of features build on common concepts,
and with different syntaxes that appeal to a wide range developers and
authors.  

Many hand-coding HTML authors will like the XForms Tiny and Web Forms
2.0 attribute-rich syntaxes with everything in one place.  Many authors
who use object or database systems (including Java libraries, PHP
libraries, UI frameworks, etc) will enjoy the ability to separately
declare the data values, constraints/logic/types, and presentation.
Trying to get these two groups of developers and authors to agree isn't
goin to happen.

But as meta-level designers, people like you and I need to be able to
agree on the concepts tha feed into these two different models of the
world, and then synthesize some syntaxes that don't generate cognitive
dissonance in the end users.

Bottom line: XML isn't going away.  HTML with lotsa attributes isn't
going away.  The separation between data, logic, and presentation in
large web projects isn't going away.  JavaScript isn't going away.  And
unless we start working together, the big mess isn't goin away either.

-----Original Message-----
From: www-forms-request at w3.org [mailto:www-forms-request at w3.org] On
Behalf Of Anne van Kesteren
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 7:30 AM
To: Elliotte Harold; www-forms at w3.org
Cc: WHAT WG List
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Comparison of XForms-Tiny and WF2


On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:02:57 -0500, Elliotte Harold  
<elharo at metalab.unc.edu> wrote:
>> One would almost get the impression that supporters of XForms-Tiny
>> would rather write their own spec than engage in dialogue with the
>> community that created Web Forms 2.0...
>
> Hello, Pot? This is Kettle. You're black.

http://www.w3.org/mid/200309040935.h849Znd14136@mail.opera.no (W3C  
Member-only)


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>