Re: [whatwg] [wf2] Filtering datalist with pattern

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> 
> Yeah, I suppose that would be fine, except for extremely rare cases 
> where the value absolutely has to be outside the pattern. The following 
> don't have fixed-length numeric values, for instance:
> 
> | 
> |   
> |   
> |   
> | 
> 
> I'm not entirely sure if they're a big enough deal to bother with.

You could deal with pi and e easily enough even then, just by rounding the 
given value and then looking for that particular value as a magic number 
in the submission handling and then treating them as pi/e. It's a hack, 
but it works.

That doesn't handle i, but I have yet to see a form that asks me to select 
a number and gives specific imaginary numbers as an option (as opposed 
to accepting any complex number, at which point there's no problem again).

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Re: [whatwg] [wf2] Filtering datalist with pattern

[Matthew Raymond]

Ian Hickson wrote:

> Could you give an example of this? It seems like the common cases, like 
> picking named values, would be handled by label="" vs value="":
> 
>1:
>
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

   Yeah, I suppose that would be fine, except for extremely rare cases
where the value absolutely has to be outside the pattern. The following
don't have fixed-length numeric values, for instance:

| 
|   
|   
|   
| 

   I'm not entirely sure if they're a big enough deal to bother with.
The |label| attribute really would fix most problems. Now all we have to
do is get a vendor to implement |label| properly. :(

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Matthew Raymond]

Martijn wrote:
> On 8/23/06, David Håsäther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
>> listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?
> 
> That could happen nowadays also, that a country isn't listed in the
> select control. Indeed, I would think that the browser would keep up
> with a list of available countries.

   Screw the browser! What happens if the _SERVER_ doesn't have a
specific country name, or expects a name you don't use. You're assuming
that the country is just a string of text that's stored on the server in
the same way someone's name is, but that may not be the case.

   Even if you were to keep your country list on the server in synch
with the list on a browser, which browser do you synchronize with? Are
all the browser vendors supposed to form a central authority to decide
what all the country names are? Do they maintain different lists for
different locales? Even if they did maintain different lists for
different locales, the server would have to be notified as to which
locale you're using.

   Also, how would you refit the old sites to the new system? Are you
going to rewrite all your Perl scripting to use the new widget?

   This whole thing sounds about as fun to spec and implement as
whacking yourself repeatedly between the eyes with a ball pin hammer.

Re: [whatwg] [wf2] Filtering datalist with pattern

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 26 May 2006, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> Henri Sivonen wrote:
> > The WF2 spec does not say anything about filtering autocomplete lists  
> > on pattern and Opera 9 does not do it. However, autocomplete entries  
> > that would fail form validation are not particularly useful.
> > 
> > I suggest saying that potential autocomplete items (whether supplied  
> > by the UA itself or read from a datalist) should be tested against  
> > the datatype and the pattern of the form field being filled and  
> > should only be shown if they match both the datatype and the pattern.
> 
>This assumes that the inclusion of such items is unintentional. What
> if you wanted the user to be able to select from a fixed set of values
> that fall outside of the pattern in addition to those that fit the
> pattern? Is the proper way to handle this to force web authors to write
> these values into the pattern? This could be rather troublesome if you
> have a significant set of nonconforming datalist values.

Could you give an example of this? It seems like the common cases, like 
picking named values, would be handled by label="" vs value="":

   1:
   




   

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Aug 23, 2006, at 5:08 PM, Dean Edwards wrote:


On 23/08/06, Arve Bersvendsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:02:24 +0200, Martijn

...

I'm sure there is an official list out there (United Nations?), with
all the countries in the world.


What happens when a web developer lives in a part of the world doesn't
agree with the 'official' list of countries?


You use a .
...


Or, if you're using Web Forms 2 anyway, a .

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/

Re: [whatwg] Web Forms 2.0 is now a W3C Working Draft

[Jens Meiert]

Slightly off-topic - what I like most is this ultra-sensitive and tactful

  "for example the activation code for a nuclear weapon" [1]

Impressive.


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/web-forms-2/#the-autocomplete


-- 
Jens Meiert
http://meiert.com/

Webdesign mit CSS (O'Reilly, German)
http://meiert.com/cssdesign/

[whatwg] Some comments on server-sent events

[Anne van Kesteren]

* The event-source element has no DOM interface while it has some
attributes that probably warrant one.

* The specification doesn't define when the onevent event handler is
invoked nor when the event event is dispatched. They are only defined.
It's also unclear which interface they implement, et cetera.

* A problem with the event-source element is that the resource is loaded
before you can attach event listeners to the document. Perhaps the loading
should start after the load event is dispatched? Unless the element was
inserted into the document of course (that's actually also a bit unclear).

* Since event sources can be attached using other ways than using the
event-source element the Target field should be amended to take that into
account. (Some sentences there don't make sense for an event source
attached to an object that is not an event-source element.)

* Regarding that, I'd be interested in hearing the use case for allowing
any EventTarget to be a source for server-sent events.

* Event namespaces throughout should be changed to match DOM Level 3
Events. That basically means that http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events is
gone.

* Perhaps RemoteEvent should be replaced with a reference to CustomEvent
 from DOM Level 3 Events which offers the same type of functionality?

* What happens when the event given in the Event field doesn't match the
NCName production as required by DOM Level 3 Events such as in the example
in section 7.1.7? (It uses the event "stock change".)

* At the moment the BNF does need error handling because you could have a
";" at the start of a line without any data following (or a new line for
that matter).

* It might be better to replace the BNF with something similar as the HTML
parsing specification currently has. That provides a much more clear
processing model.

* What happens for other line feed characters? Are they treated as fields?
Won't that give lots of problems for authors coding in non-Unix formats?
HTTP for example allows both.

* "For each non-blank, non-comment line, the field name is first
taken[...]" doesn't cover what happens to command lines.

* "The ctrlKey field would be ignored[...]" should probably say
"keyIdentifier" as that's what's used in the example.


--
Anne van Kesteren

Re: [whatwg] Workflow and web applications

[Dean Edwards]

On 23/08/06, Francisco Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


How do you get workflow in a Web Application using only Web Browser
technology, Microsoft I think is the only company which will bring a
workflow to the masses, Using a combination of Dojo widgets we can achieve
something very similar see this URL
http://showoff2.awardspace.biz/pack/pack/examples/tabswitch2.html



That page took about 20 seconds to load on my corporate network. And
then it didn't work. I got "dojo" is undefined.

-dean

[whatwg] Workflow and web applications

[Francisco Monteiro]

How do you get 
workflow in a Web Application using only Web Browser technology, Microsoft I 
think is the only company which will bring a workflow to the masses, Using a 
combination of Dojo widgets we can achieve something very similar see this URL 
http://showoff2.awardspace.biz/pack/pack/examples/tabswitch2.html
 
From a MVC design 
concept XForms in conjunction with XML Event (xmlns = http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events" 
) becomes the controller.
 
Regarding input = 
country, you can have XForms select1 control with type =open, the control 
supports nodeset which can be downloaded via "services" or use XInclude to bring 
in the countries set.
 
Regards
Francisco
 
 


smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Arve Bersvendsen]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:36:44 +0200, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:



You can have a select list and an input control at the same time, not?


See Lachlan Hunt's suggestion elsewhere in this thread, he uses:



[...]


This gives you an input type="text" that has an attached dropdown with  
your suggestions.  With unobtrusive scripting, you could filter this list  
automatically as the user types (by setting the disabled attribute on  
non-matching s.

--
Arve Bersvendsen, Opera Software ASA, http://www.opera.com/

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Martijn]

On 8/23/06, Stewart Brodie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
> > listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?
>
> That could happen nowadays also, that a country isn't listed in the select
> control. Indeed, I would think that the browser would keep up with a list
> of available countries.

Who would look after this list?  The U.N.?  Not all countries in the world
are members of the U.N.  In which languages will this list be maintained?
What am I supposed to do if I'm not on an Internet-connected node?


I would think the list is in the same language as the browser. I don't
see a reason why you should be connected to the internet to be able to
show the input type="country" widget (although for submitting forms it
is often necessary).
Yes, I know there are political problems, with a list of countries, so
there is an issue there.

Regards,
Martijn


This sort of 'official list of all possible answers' thing is already a very
real problem for interacting with websites of less enlightened companies and
organisations (primarily in the United States, but I've found a few in other
countries as well, though).  I'm asked to choose a country from the supplied
list, but even though I've selected 'United Kingdom', the form still refuses
to submit because it requires me to say which of the 50 U.S. states I'm in!


--
Stewart Brodie
Software Engineer
ANT Software Limited

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Stewart Brodie]

On 8/23/06, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 8/23/06, David Håsäther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Well, the browser should be able to keep up with the current list of
> > > countries, shouldn't it? It's not like it is something that is
> > > changing every minute.
> >
> > But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
> > listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?
>
> That could happen nowadays also, that a country isn't listed in the select
> control. Indeed, I would think that the browser would keep up with a list
> of available countries.

Who would look after this list?  The U.N.?  Not all countries in the world
are members of the U.N.  In which languages will this list be maintained?
What am I supposed to do if I'm not on an Internet-connected node?

This sort of 'official list of all possible answers' thing is already a very
real problem for interacting with websites of less enlightened companies and
organisations (primarily in the United States, but I've found a few in other
countries as well, though).  I'm asked to choose a country from the supplied
list, but even though I've selected 'United Kingdom', the form still refuses
to submit because it requires me to say which of the 50 U.S. states I'm in!


-- 
Stewart Brodie
Software Engineer
ANT Software Limited

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:24:52 +0700, David Håsäther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:



But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?



That could happen nowadays also, that a country isn't listed in the
select control. Indeed, I would think that the browser would keep up
with a list of available countries.



Yes, this is why it's probably not a good idea to use a select list
for contries, since there is a possibility that your country is not on
the list.


Web Forms 2.0 provides a datalist element which can be used to supplement  
a free-form text input with a list of suggested values.


Also, we should not forget that Web Forms 2.0 allows  and  
 to have a "data" attribute which references an external list of  
choices. Hosting the list of countries once per website seems like a good  
solution.



--
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Martijn]

On 8/23/06, David Håsäther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Yes, this is why it's probably not a good idea to use a select list
for contries, since there is a possibility that your country is not on
the list.


You can have a select list and an input control at the same time, not?

Regards,
Martijn


--
David Håsäther

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Martijn]

On 8/23/06, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> David Håsäther wrote:
>> But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
>> listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?
>
> Many modern browsers already periodically check for updates.  Such lists
> could be downloaded like any other update, as required.

But it seems like a rather onerous requirement to have in the spec for what
would be a very minor feature. Also, having an application that may display and
be expected to process different countries depending on the particular revision
of the particular browser being used seems like a poor idea from both a UI and
back-end point of view.


It's not something that would happen very often, and I don't think I
would encounter that problem at all.
The UI I get nowadays is already poor (webpages with a very long list
of countries in a select box), I would hope that a browser UI for
input type="country" would be better.


How useful would this type of control actually be? How often do people really
need to list every country in the world? The control would have no semantic
value beyond a  since many more-specific country lists ("all the
countries in Europe", "all the countries we sell to") would still be implemented
as s.


It's not used as often as the request for an email or name for
example, but it is asked pretty often, I think.

Regards,
Martijn


--
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[James Graham]

Lachlan Hunt wrote:

David Håsäther wrote:

But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?


Many modern browsers already periodically check for updates.  Such lists 
could be downloaded like any other update, as required.


But it seems like a rather onerous requirement to have in the spec for what 
would be a very minor feature. Also, having an application that may display and 
be expected to process different countries depending on the particular revision 
of the particular browser being used seems like a poor idea from both a UI and 
back-end point of view.


How useful would this type of control actually be? How often do people really 
need to list every country in the world? The control would have no semantic 
value beyond a  since many more-specific country lists ("all the 
countries in Europe", "all the countries we sell to") would still be implemented 
as s.


--
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
 -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[David Håsäther]

On 8/23/06, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On 8/23/06, David Håsäther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Well, the browser should be able to keep up with the current list of
> > countries, shouldn't it? It's not like it is something that is
> > changing every minute.
>
> But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
> listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?

That could happen nowadays also, that a country isn't listed in the
select control. Indeed, I would think that the browser would keep up
with a list of available countries.


Yes, this is why it's probably not a good idea to use a select list
for contries, since there is a possibility that your country is not on
the list.

--
David Håsäther

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Martijn]

On 8/23/06, David Håsäther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Well, the browser should be able to keep up with the current list of
> countries, shouldn't it? It's not like it is something that is
> changing every minute.

But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?


That could happen nowadays also, that a country isn't listed in the
select control. Indeed, I would think that the browser would keep up
with a list of available countries.

Regards,
Martijn


--
David Håsäther

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Lachlan Hunt]

David Håsäther wrote:

But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?


Many modern browsers already periodically check for updates.  Such lists 
could be downloaded like any other update, as required.


--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Lachlan Hunt]

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:46:51 +0200, Alexey Feldgendler 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

What would be different between  and ?


One allows a list of countries (possibly implemented as a nice globe) 
and one allows a list of arbitrary things. However, I think we should 
watch out for feature creep and such although I countries are often 
asked on sites.


XBL will theoretically allow the author to provide that functionality by 
binding some globe widget to the controls.  Such a widget could possibly 
be implemented using the Google Maps API to render the map and some 
additional script to handle selection of a country.


In a recent site I built, I implemented country selection using 
something like this:




[...]


Then wrote some JavaScript to simulate the drop down for all browsers, 
except Opera which already has native support.


--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[David Håsäther]

On 8/23/06, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On 8/23/06, Arve Bersvendsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:44:37 +0200, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> > There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
> > Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
> > I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
> > line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.
>
> Which countries we have in the world, and how they are named is a rather
> volatile property. Countries change name depending on the current rule(r),
> and as not-too-distant European history taught us, countries break up.
> The definition of what is a country varies depending on who you ask, so
> such a form control is hard to accomplish.

Well, the browser should be able to keep up with the current list of
countries, shouldn't it? It's not like it is something that is
changing every minute.


But what if you use a browser with an old list, and your contry isn't
listed. Or are you proposing that browsers download a list every time?

--
David Håsäther

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Dean Edwards]

On 23/08/06, Arve Bersvendsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:02:24 +0200, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> I'm sure there is an official list out there (United Nations?), with
> all the countries in the world.

What happens when a web developer lives in a part of the world doesn't
agree with the 'official' list of countries?



You use a .

-dean

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Arve Bersvendsen]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:02:24 +0200, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:



I'm sure there is an official list out there (United Nations?), with
all the countries in the world.


What happens when a web developer lives in a part of the world doesn't  
agree with the 'official' list of countries?


--
Arve Bersvendsen, Opera Software ASA, http://www.opera.com/

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Martijn]

On 8/23/06, Arve Bersvendsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:44:37 +0200, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
> Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
> I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
> line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.

Which countries we have in the world, and how they are named is a rather
volatile property. Countries change name depending on the current rule(r),
and as not-too-distant European history taught us, countries break up.
The definition of what is a country varies depending on who you ask, so
such a form control is hard to accomplish.


Well, the browser should be able to keep up with the current list of
countries, shouldn't it? It's not like it is something that is
changing every minute.
I'm sure there is an official list out there (United Nations?), with
all the countries in the world.

Regards,
Martijn


Arve Bersvendsen

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[James Graham]

Alexey Feldgendler wrote:

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:51:25 +0700, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.



 What would be different between  and ?


I presume he's thinking of an input with a browser-supplied list of 
countries. This has been discussed before as, as I recall, was 
considered a huge can of worms that we don't want to open.


Could you point to that discussion in the archive?


See e.g. 
http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2004-August/001775.html and 
followups (this isn't the first post in the thread but the thread title seems to 
have changed or something so I didn't find the very start - I think it's good 
enough though)



--
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
 -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Arve Bersvendsen]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:44:37 +0200, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:



There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.


Which countries we have in the world, and how they are named is a rather  
volatile property. Countries change name depending on the current rule(r),  
and as not-too-distant European history taught us, countries break up.   
The definition of what is a country varies depending on who you ask, so  
such a form control is hard to accomplish.


--
Arve Bersvendsen

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:51:25 +0700, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.



 What would be different between  and ?


I presume he's thinking of an input with a browser-supplied list of  
countries. This has been discussed before as, as I recall, was  
considered a huge can of worms that we don't want to open.


Could you point to that discussion in the archive?


--
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Dean Edwards]

On 23/08/06, Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


What would be different between  and ?



I would hope that the UA would maintain a list of countries/ISO codes
and populate a combo box for you. Otherwise, there is no difference.

-dean

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[James Graham]

Alexey Feldgendler wrote:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:44:37 +0700, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:



There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.


What would be different between  and ?


I presume he's thinking of an input with a browser-supplied list of countries. 
This has been discussed before as, as I recall, was considered a huge can of 
worms that we don't want to open.


--
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
 -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:46:51 +0200, Alexey Feldgendler  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

What would be different between  and ?


One allows a list of countries (possibly implemented as a nice globe) and  
one allows a list of arbitrary things. However, I think we should watch  
out for feature creep and such although I countries are often asked on  
sites.



--
Anne van Kesteren

Re: [whatwg] input type="country"?

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:44:37 +0700, Martijn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:



There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.


What would be different between  and ?


--
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

[whatwg] input type="country"?

[Martijn]

There are times I have to select in which country I live in.
Wouldn't a input type="country" widget be useful here?
I couldn't find one on the web forms 2.0 spec, but something in that
line is already there, then I'm sorry, and you can ignore this mail.

Regards,
Martijn

Re: [whatwg] Dynamic content accessibility in HTML today

[James Graham]

Matthew Raymond wrote:
Show me a spec that says that in a normative way. It is merely a "best 
practice". Class names, in general, are meaningless and meaningful class 
names should not be part of the core specification.


   The reason that semantic class names are "best practice" is because
class names that are purely for presentational effects are less useful
when using alternate or user style sheets.


That's a purely "human factor" though. There's no reason you can't use class="bigredtext"> and style it with an Aural style sheet. Or indeed with a 
visual stylesheet to present the text in small, blue letters. It's just /likely/ 
to make your document harder to understand if you do that.


> In fact,

a presentational class name might be applied to elements that have
different semantics just because the author wanted to use the same style
for all the elements, giving the impression that elements are related
even when they're not.


That would be an acceptable use of class. It would probably be poor design 
(because later the author might want to restyle the elements separately) but 
that's not our problem. Indeed a nominal requirement that class names map to 
semantics would be impractical; there exists no 1:1 mapping between the 
semantics of an element and the way it is presented within a particular document 
(e.g. I might want 7  elements 3 being styled with a left float and red text 
and 4 being styled with a right float and green text).


Any attempt to formalise the class attribute beyond "it takes arbitrary values" 
is imho misguided and doomed to failure.


Of course, if you plan to put all the semantics of a document in the 
class names, we could do away with many elements. Do you object to class="h1"> as a replacement for ?


   Your example only makes sense if you assume a mix of presentational
names and semantics names as class values. For authors that use only
semantic class names, the example is meaningless.


?


   The values for |role| are nothing more than a new set of class names,
and there is nothing preventing the user from putting in unidentified
|role| values for presentational purposes and then styling them via CSS
using attribute selectors. So aside from being mildly harder to select
from CSS, |role| values are potentially no more semantic than |class|
values.
Authors can misuse anything. This is the main text of my document put in a 
heading so that search bots think that it's really relevant and useful.


   What you fail to understand is that user agents will have to have
means of handling the misuse,


No. I'm pretty sure I do understand that.


which means that many of the differences
between |role| and |class| are more conceptual than practical.


Not really (but don't take that as meaning that conceptual differences are 
unimportant! The difference between semantics and presentation is more 
conceptual than practical: a human will get the semantics - what is a header and 
what isn't, for example - from the presentation, not the 'semantics' embedded in 
the markup). Practically, class is an attribute in widespread use without any 
regard for the information required by accessibility tools. That means many 
pages could already be using class="tab" where their role attribute would be 
"tabpanel". Practically the class attribute is valuable in making arbitrary 
groups of elements suitable for selection by CSS or scripts - this has nothing 
to do with semantics of any kind. Practically, the presence of a role attribute 
implies that a group of elements should be interpreted as a particular component 
of a UI widget, significantly altering the interpretation of that subtree - 
justification enough for a new attribute (and, in some cases, for whole new 
/elements/)- and that other attributes on the element will be interpreted as 
ancillary information about that widget.



   However, let's assume that people would only use semantic values in
|role|. What becomes of |class|? We use it only for styling? That won't
work, because HTML is supposed to be semantic.
We use it for it's purpose - to provide hooks to enable presentational 
languages to couple to arbitrary groups of elements on a page. This kind 
of non-semantic hook is _necessary_ so that the temptation to abuse the 
semantic elements is greatly reduced.


   The use case for such classes will become progressively smaller as
XBL2 is introduced and CSS improves.


Why do anything today when in several decades you might not have to bother? I 
mean it's just happenstance that no-one is expected to need an assistive 
technology until 2050 or whenever CSS4+XBL2 are maturely implemented and, 
through a programme of extensive brainwashing, authors start doing the correct 
thing rather than the easy thing.



   So what we end up doing is replacing |class| with an attribute named
|role| that has more rules but otherwise does the same thing.
No. We add an attribute which conveys specific semantics ("this element 
is being used as

[whatwg] Writing Web MVC applications using Xforms as the controller

[Francisco Monteiro]

Ever dreamt of 
easily writing your own controls using state of the art frameworks like Yahoo!, 
Dojo, Google, Backbase etc, light weight schema processing, template processing, 
many other features which I think XForms is truly lacking (BTW it is Xforms 1.0+ 
compliant). It is very easy to prototype using this 
prototype!
 
Look no further, at 
the following location you will see a subset of the implementation 
capability
 
1) http://showoff2.awardspace.biz/pack/pack/examples/address.html
A full blown 
template control, template processing done using Dojo and Trimpath and data type validation 
(supports all W3C schema types). Partial support for Schematron 
processing!
 
2) http://showoff2.awardspace.biz/pack/pack/examples/tabswitch.html
A very easy way to 
get tab switch, none of the trickery relating to css bla blah. Uses widgets from 
TurboAjax
 
3) http://showoff2.awardspace.biz/pack/pack/examples/dojo2Xforms.html
 
Straight Dojo off 
the shelf widgets used as XForms controls
 
Present repeat  it in a "page view", the demo can 
be found at this URL
http://showoff2.awardspace.biz/pack/pack/examples/dojoRepeat.html
 
When 
@appearance=page, the control automatically presents the user with a set of 
buttons to view the set. If you see all 20 pages then reduce size of browser 
window, presentation is automatically adjusted to maximise the user 
presentation. Every thing on the page is customisable with CSS (control is 
really a Dojo Widget, so style is applied and can be customised by user). Do a 
view source to see how presentation is performed, click "View ASIN 
features".
 
At this URL http://showoff2.awardspace.biz/pack/pack/examples/dojoRepeatTable.html is 
an example displaying repeat in table mode, well actually it uses the @repeat- 
attributes on html table, but something like this is very useful for Joe public 
who is more familiar with tables then CSS (that's includes 
me!)
 
Want to try 
your hand at using this implementation, send me an email. If you encounter any errors please reload forms demo 
running on a slow server!
 

Regards
Francisco Monteiro
CTO
Facile Technology Ltd.
facileXForms - 
a XForms implementation that is AJAX at 
heart.


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