(X)Forms in Biblilographic Apps
Awhile back I wrote that a new bibliographic web application ought to include:
A configurable form system flexible enough to be configured for any resource type: everything from journal articles to books, to archival documents, to weblog posts. This presumes the form system should not be based on RIS or BibTeX, but rather around a more flexible standard like MODS. Either XML or YAML would be good bets for configuration languages in Ruby or Python.
I probably mentioned the idea of using a simple XML language to configure the GUI elsewhere too. In any case, MS has done just that in Word 2007:
So it seems the entire editing forms are configured with this XML file. In fact, I bet (though cannot now test) that one could add custom types by simply editing this file.
Interestingly, the author definition includes an assocaited XSLT that converts a simple string to properly-structured XML, and another to convert the other way (though I still hate that it all—including the XML—presumes standard Western name forms; what if I am a scholar of Chinese history?). I wonder, can you do this in XForms?
I’ve been saying for awhile that OOo needs to deepen XForms support to open it up to developers for these sorts of uses. This would be particularly interesing when coupled with the idea that a couple of the Sun engineers were discussing at the ODF metadata SC of creating a standard RDF XForms binding for our metadata work. That could GUIs to be essentially auto-configured for custom content.
