Formbuilder roadmap and performance

Hi,

I've recently come across the formbuilder. From the first looks it is an
interesting 'product', compliments.

From what I've seen you eat your own dogfood because the form builder is
implemented in xforms. At first glance this is a great demonstration of xforms
capabilities, although I have to say that you need to be a real expert to
contribute things.

I have two questions regarding the formbuilder. The first is performance. On my
2GHz 1.5 GB laptop, which is running both the formbuilder builder application
and the browser accessing it, performance with only 10 elements is not that
responsive. I've disabled firebug etc, so I'm using a vanilla browser. Since
the forms we need to create can have up to 200 fields, I'm (at the moment)
reluctant to start using it for a demo. I'll try adding more elements and see
what happens, but related to this is my second question.

We have large xsd's for these forms and are wondering if there is some
functionality planned to start using an xsd and generate a vanilla xform which
can then be manipulated with the builder. Besides this (and I've looked but
were unable to find it) a generic roadmap or small document with planned
features of the builder would be nice.

Regards,

Ronald


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Ronald,

> I've recently come across the formbuilder. From the first looks it  
> is an
> interesting 'product', compliments.

Thanks a lot.

It is a real product, albeit an open source one ;-) But please keep in  
mind that we still consider it alpha software.

> From what I've seen you eat your own dogfood because the form  
> builder is
> implemented in xforms. At first glance this is a great demonstration  
> of xforms
> capabilities, although I have to say that you need to be a real  
> expert to
> contribute things.

It is a complex application, probably the most complex we have written  
with XForms so far. An architecture document would probably help.
That's right, we are still working on performance. It does degrade as  
you add elements. It is not an issue inherent to the architecture  
though, so we have good hope to improve this soon.

> We have large xsd's for these forms and are wondering if there is some
> functionality planned to start using an xsd and generate a vanilla  
> xform which
> can then be manipulated with the builder.

This is almost a FAQ. We would like very much to have something like  
this in the future, but we don't yet.

> Besides this (and I've looked but
> were unable to find it) a generic roadmap or small document with  
> planned
> features of the builder would be nice.


We have lots of features in mind, but the list was not public. We have  
now put those on a public wiki page:

   http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/projects/form-builder-future-features

I hope this helps,

-Erik

--
Orbeon Forms - Web Forms for the Enterprise Done the Right Way
http://www.orbeon.com/



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Erik Bruchez schreef: which has the same philosophy.  I wrote 'product' since it is not a
separate thing (and in alpha).  It's part of a larger ecosystem, albeit
a nice one. the complexity of the xforms themselves... I started writing a similar
thing 3 days ago, but in JSF. We decided to not go that way and use a
text editor with a kind of real-time preview once a save is done (like
e.g. your xforms-sandbox can be used) Good to hear, I'll certainly be on the lookout
>> We have large xsd's for these forms and are wondering if there is some
>> functionality planned to start using an xsd and generate a vanilla
>> xform which
>> can then be manipulated with the builder.
>
> This is almost a FAQ. We would like very much to have something like
> this in the future, but we don't yet.
>
Chiba (what I used up to now and most likely will sometime in the
future, migrating is not easy and not my decision since I'll be leaving
the company I work for) does have two xsd2xforms. One based on an XSLT
and one based on Java. Both are not realy maintained and I'll probably
be stepping in, maybe even making it a separate project somewhere. Not
sure though if the xlst or java version is easier to maintain. If you
guys have a list of requirements somewhere, I'd be interested. One of
the things is that I read somewhere that the formbuilder has some
requirements regarding the xforms. If those are also documented, I'll
see what I can do.
>> Besides this (and I've looked but
>> were unable to find it) a generic roadmap or small document with planned
>> features of the builder would be nice.
>
> We have lots of features in mind, but the list was not public. We have
> now put those on a public wiki page:
>
>   http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/projects/form-builder-future-features
>
Great, thanks
> I hope this helps,
>
Sure does.

btw, any idea how I can change the 'ow' when I post to my real name,
which was empty initially, but now contains it.


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At the moment we don't have a list of requirements for this feature.  
Everything is in the air. But please feel free to contribute ideas or  
code to XML Schema support in Form Builder ;-)

> btw, any idea how I can change the 'ow' when I post to my real name,  
> which was empty initially, but now contains it.

I see your real name fine in the From header.

-Erik

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Orbeon Forms - Web Forms for the Enterprise Done the Right Way
http://www.orbeon.com/



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