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- From: "Matthew Sergeant (EML)" <Matthew.Sergeant@eml.ericsson.se>
- To: "'Dave Winer'" <dave@userland.com>, xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
- Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 14:58:21 +0200
Looks interesting. You could extend this to store the prefs in XML also, by using the schema in my CGI::XMLForm module. It stores the form element names as XSL/XQL-like queries, and creates XML based on the form. For an online example see http://sergeant.org/cgi-bin/cvedit.pl (and do a view-source to see what's going on).
Matt.
--
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It's Matt. See http://sergeant.org/notmatthew.txt
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Winer [SMTP:dave@userland.com]
> Sent: Sunday, May 16, 1999 3:28 PM
> To: xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
> Subject: XML for Preferences
>
> We've come up with another excellent use for XML, to specify the interface
> for a web-based preference system.
>
> There are a lot of reasons why XML is the right choice here. First, it's
> understandable to people who write documentation. That means that the
> preferences wizard has a hope of being understandable to newcomers, since
> the system developer doesn't have to write the help text, and the work
> doesn't even need to be coordinated. The interactive part is just software,
> interpreting the content which is specified in XML.
>
> Also, you can render the same specification in a variety of different
> formats. For now, we're rendering as HTML, but it could just as easily be
> rendered in Flash, DHTML or as a Visual Basic "wizard". The concepts and
> the content are the same, but the engine running the content doesn't have
> to be.
>
> Further, if there were an agreement on how to specify preferences systems
> we could switch our deployment from Frontier to PHP or Zope or Oracle or
> Vignette, or whatever, and a lot of our content would just move with us by
> moving the preferences spec.
>
> In other words, this is an important place where a standard, defacto or
> standards-body-based, would enable growth and eliminate lock-in.
>
> ***Where we're at with this
>
> We have a running system at http://prefs.userland.com/. This is a live
> system, to access it you must be a member of userland.com, which is open to
> the public.
>
> If you're not a member, go to this page: http://logon.userland.com/, go
> thru the logon sequence, get the password via email, it should be
> self-explanatory.
>
> Sorry, there's no way to use this system without being a member. We won't
> do anything with your email address other than store it along with your
> password and preferences.
>
> ***Show me the XML!
>
> Now, there are two ways to see the XML spec behind this system. First you
> can directly access the XML page, thru this URL:
>
> http://prefs.userland.com/outline.xml
>
> Or you can see a screen shot of the editor:
>
> http://discuss.userland.com/msgReader$6316
>
> Important point: Any XML editor can be used to edit this text. It does not
> have to be our outliner, which is a good XML editor. Any tool that can
> produce XML output will work fine.
>
> ***How to think of this
>
> It's a very lightweight thing. Any HTML coder can learn how to do this.
> It's not as powerful as Mozilla's XUL, but then it's a lot simpler than
> XUL. We looked at XUL before doing this, thinking perhaps that it would be
> a good starting point. We decided that it introduced a lot of unnecessary
> complexity for the people doing authoring, writers, explainers, users.
>
> We're doing this in the open. Maybe someone else wants to build on this
> idea? If so, please let me know. The spirit of XML is building on each
> others' work, that's why I keep telling you guys what we're doing.
>
> Keep diggin!
>
> Dave Winer
> UserLand Software
>
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