Forms Working Group Teleconference -- 21 Aug 2013

<trackbot> Date: 21 August 2013

"Nick: I will be away the first three weeks of September"

<nvdbleek> zaki, code?

Formulas for summing values, done right

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2013Aug/0005.html

Erik: People have trouble working out how to do this. It is hard in many languages.
... handling currencies for instance should be in decimal

Orbeon Forms 4.3

http://blog.orbeon.com/2013/08/orbeon-forms-43.html

Steven: Anything particular worth mentioning?

Erik: Extensions that might be worth bringing to XForms sometime
... dealing with multiple constraints
... different alert messages for different constraints
... and BetterForms have something similar
... we went a little further
... and have warnings as well as errors

XForms in 2013

http://dubinko.info/blog/2013/08/10/xforms-in-2013/

Steven: For the record

XSLTForms Gets AVTs!!!!!

http://kurtcagle.tumblr.com/post/18517790086/xsltforms-gets-avts

Steven: Advertising the benefits of AVTs in XForms

FYI: Average Income per Programming Language

http://bpodgursky.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/average-income-per-programming-language/

Steven: An interesting analysis, not sure how true.

ACTION-1954 - Add the bind() function

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2013Aug/0009.html

Steven: Looked fine to me
... everyone else OK?

Erik: We had discussed earlier
... John Boyer had said "it would be nice if..." with some extra features, but they aren't in there.
... issues with the dependency graph.
... Would need more work to deal with that.

ACTION-1896 - Send a e-mail to Michael Kay about providing type

information to the nodes in instances

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-forms/2013Aug/0007.html

Nick: We never came to a conclusion with this. It sort of fizzled out.

Erik: I had it on my list, I realised recently looking at the expressions (see above), that it needed to be done.
... the problem is that any expression that deals with data in the model, involves types.
... numbers and dates particularly
... it makes perfect sense that expressions use information about the types without using casts

Steven: So you derive types from the model and pass them on?

Erik: XPath engines can support this.
... Xpath 2 supports using type information (e.g. in a+b) if available.

Steven: Is it as if you are supplying invisible casts?

Erik: Yes.
... Xpath 2 supports it in the API
... I had an action item to ask Mike Kay
... XForms can't guarantee that at runtime the value has the right type.
... Mike Kay was a bit puzzled, and was surprised about what I told him, probably because he is not at home with XForms
... but he said he would expect an implementation would provide types

Steven: So you proposed writing some text.

Erik: Yes. I don't think it is too hard to specify.
... Kay suggested that the results of the calculations should be used for coercions.
... I haven't considered that yet.

Nick: If you have a bind to a schema type, some Xpath engines don't necessarily support it.
... so it can't be required.

Erik: Right.
... but having support for the simple types is already useful.

Nick: I agree.

<scribe> ACTION: Erik to write text for type information for XPath expressions [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2013/08/21-forms-minutes.html#action01]

<trackbot> Created ACTION-1955 - Write text for type information for xpath expressions [on Erik Bruchez - due 2013-08-28].

Progress to LC

Steven: Nick is about to go away. I shall be unavailable for two calls.
... So let's try for a call for the 18th September, but up to then we are on hold.

Nick: I won't be able to do preparatory work for that call.

Steven: No problem, we can use the call to schedule the progress.

AOB

Steven: ?

[ADJOURN]

- DRAFT -

Forms Working Group Teleconference

21 Aug 2013

Attendees

Contents