repeat as table ?

[Chris]

I'm transitioning from formsplayer and I can't figure out how to get
my repeating groups
to look like an html table.

I assume there is some CSS way of doing it or something that I'm
missing.
(my CSS isn't transitioning very well at the moment either)
A pointer to an outside web source or something would be appreciated.

Chris

[Mark Birbeck]

Hi Chris,

I don't know if you're aware, but formsPlayer is now the open source
project 'Ubiquity formsPlayer' [1]. The eventual aim is that UXF and
UfP work together smoothly, so any discrepancies you are finding
between the way CSS is handled would be worth flagging up in the
issue-tracking system.

Thanks.

Regards,

Mark

[1] <http://ubiquity-formsPlayer.googlecode.com/>

--
Mark Birbeck, webBackplane

mark.b...@webBackplane.com

http://webBackplane.com/mark-birbeck

webBackplane is a trading name of Backplane Ltd. (company number
05972288, registered office: 2nd Floor, 69/85 Tabernacle Street,
London, EC2A 4RR)

[Chris]

Hi Mark,

I'm not aware of hardly anything... so feel free to educate me.

I'm working on a web app to allow non-technical users to edit a
specific type of XML file.
Instead of writing the whole thing in perl/CGI, I found Xforms and
decided to learn about
it. This is an invoice-like document so the repeating groups being
handled client-side
is very attractive. My users are already required to have IE, so I
went looking for an
Xforms plugin or something for IE and came across formsPlayer.

I've been working from the Dubinko book "XForms Essentials" and the
Raman book
"XForms XML Powered Web Forms", and various examples from online. To
be honest,
it seems like there isn't a lot of consistency about what works and
what doesn't. And
the books are good up to about the 80% point. That last 20% is
groping in the dark
(and asking questions of experts like you guys).

I was moving forward with formsPlayer until I discovered that the
position() function didn't work.
Then I found this library, which I assumed was a replacement
technology for formsPlayer,
and is a little nicer anyway since there's no client-side install
involved.

And now I'm trying to get my user interface back to where it was with
formsPlayer.
It is definitely not using the same CSS. I am by no means a CSS
expert. I just
muddle around until something starts to work. Switching from
formsPlayer, almost
all of my CSS no longer works. My input field widths are back to the
default
presentation. And (not CSS) the formsPlayer way of making booleans
appear as a checkbox
no longer works. And (not CSS) the repeating groups are all
stretched out instead of showing
up as a table. I think I can eventually get it tamed again. But I'll
take any
hints or advice I can get.

Is formsPlayer still being worked on? I assumed this replaced it.


On Apr 29, 9:27 am, Mark Birbeck <mark.birb...@webbackplane.com>
wrote:

> Hi Chris,
>
> I don't know if you're aware, but formsPlayer is now the open source
> project 'Ubiquity formsPlayer' [1]. The eventual aim is that UXF and
> UfP work together smoothly, so any discrepancies you are finding
> between the way CSS is handled would be worth flagging up in the
> issue-tracking system.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark
>
> [1] <http://ubiquity-formsPlayer.googlecode.com/>
>
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Chris <ch...@yipyap.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm transitioning from formsplayer and I can't figure out how to get
> > my repeating groups
> > to look like an html table.
>
> > I assume there is some CSS way of doing it or something that I'm
> > missing.
> > (my CSS isn't transitioning very well at the moment either)
> > A pointer to an outside web source or something would be appreciated.
>
> > Chris
>
> --
> Mark Birbeck, webBackplane
>

> mark.birb...@webBackplane.com

[Mark Birbeck]

Hi Chris,

> Is formsPlayer still being worked on?

It is, but we're prioritising UXF for the moment, because we think
that having a full Ajax library is a great way for people to get
started with XForms, and such a library fits nicely with how a lot of
people develop web applications nowadays.

> I assumed this replaced it.

No, not at all. For a start, they serve different uses.

For example, a number of companies are using Ubiquity formsPlayer as a
forms rendering component within .NET applications. Phil's CodeProject
article illustrates how this can be done:

<http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/XFormsNET.aspx>

But also there are some things that are going to be very difficult to
implement in JavaScript, with the current state of browsers, and so
certain situations will require a plug-in like UfP that can control
the entire environment.

Going forwards, though, the big plan is to draw UXF and UfP more into line.

For example, just as UXF will check to see if DOM 2 Events is
implemented natively, and if it's not will add its own JS version (for
IE), so too if we discover that a dependency-graph is available (via
UfP or some other provider) so we can use that instead of the JS
version.

And of course, there are benefits to be had the other way around, too.
For example, UfP could use the JavaScript code for submission from
UXF, since performance is not going to be an issue (most of the time
taken to do a submission is on the wire). That way there would be only
one lot of code for us to maintain.

Anyway, I'll be writing more about this in the near future, but that
should at least give you a 'view from 50,000 feet'.

Regards,

Mark

--
Mark Birbeck, webBackplane

mark.b...@webBackplane.com