Re: XML/XSL on the client for dynamic UI

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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