Re: XML/XSL on the client for dynamic UI

[nimrod@xxxxxxxxxx]

Hi,

I've just noticed Olivier's post from about 2 weeks ago
(e-mail backlog and all that).

There are several issues to be discussed:
(a) The backend application (which handles steps 1 & 4);
(b) The frontend client; and
(c) The XML/XSL/... standards (DTD/Schema/...) for describing
    the UI and the data.

I certainly agree that (a) should be addressed by the
application servers, although without (b) and (c) they
will be locking into proprietary solutions.

There are several attempts at (b), each carrying their
own (non-standard, naturally) version of (c).  A few that
I'm aware of are the Mozilla XUL and XPToolkit (which is
highly Web-browser oriented), IBM's BML (which is highly
JavaBean oriented), and PDML (which comes from the AS/400
world with its own rendering engine).

All of the above couple (b) and (c) very tightly, which
is not a very open direction (especially if you think
about different platforms, such as PDAs etc.).
Moreover, none that I'm aware of pay any consideration to
representing the actual data (as opposed to the UI
description) and mixing it with the UI.

AFAIK, (c) is not targeted (by itself) by anyone.

Is anyone feeling like joining an effort for designing a
standard in this direction?  I think a properly designed
standard could benefit many applications, as well as help
direct the development of future UIs.

Please respond to the list or to me personally, and I'll
see if there's enough interest to start forming some
coordinated effort.

Nimrod.


> John is right, I'm having in mind what he calls "customizable
> data-entry forms and such, which would vary with the content
> being collected". I originally had a look at XUL, however, and
> as far as I understood, the purpose is only to have a language
> describing the UI (its menus and dialogs typically) and not
> to implement it directly.
>
> The two solutions I went through and that I was trying to
> briefly describe in my original thread (HTML/DSO/XML and
> XML/XSL/HTML) are trying to do this.
>
> Maybe to rephrase the idea, the flow of the application would be
> something like this:
>
> 1. On the server, the XML data file is prepared from the content
>    of several RDBMS table.
> 2. The user receives in its browser this XML document and a way
>    to render it.
> 3. The user then enters the data he wants into various fields
>    (each of them having its own validation and event handling,
>    for instance implemented in JavaScript if we keep the
>    browser idea). All those changes are automatically updating
>    the XML document locally.
> 4. When finished, the user is submitting the updated XML data
>    back to the server which will update the database tables
>    accordingly.
>
> My current interest is mainly on steps 2. and 3., 1. and 4.
> starting to be easy to address on an application server, or at
> least people are obviously working on it at the moment (see the
> recent XML server debate on this list).
>
> Olivier.
>
>
> >From: "John E. Simpson" <simpson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> >Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 11:29:35 -0400
> >Cc: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> >At 06:45 AM 10/26/1999 -0700, Dale Asberry wrote:
> >>I've not really investigated beyond just a quick glance, but
> >>isn't XUL (eXtensible User-interface Language) supposed to
> >>support these ideas?  I'm not sure if this is true, but I
> >>remember reading that the Mozilla group is strongly
> >>considering using XUL to define the browser interface.  Anyone
> >>else see anything along these lines?
> >
> >I thought of XUL at first, too. (Yeah, I'm pretty sure
> >Mozilla's UI is indeed completely specified and customizable
> >with XUL.) But then I thought about it some more and I believe
> >what the original poster was really talking about had to do
> >with customizable data-entry forms and such, which would vary
> >with the content being collected -- not so much the chrome of
> >buttons, scrollbars, and the like. Dunno if XUL would be of any
> >help at all if that's what he was talking about. (Except that
> >you could dynamically add things like toolbar buttons, maybe.)



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