Visual XForms Designer
A standards-based, easy-to-use Eclipse plug-in enabling the rapid development of documents with XForms mark-up using a visual user interface.
Date Posted: March 30, 2006
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This is an  technology.
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Update: August 31, 2006
Incorporation of Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) XML Editor, along with context assistance; improvements to design canvas; improved XML instance document handling; support for Eclipse 3.2 and Eclipse Web Tools 1.5 (WTP).
What is Visual XForms Designer?
Visual XForms Designer is an easy-to-use set of graphical tools and interfaces for expediting the creation and editing of documents with XForms-based content. This Eclipse plug-in makes the process of creating documents with XForms content easier, faster, and simpler.
Some of the capabilities of the Visual XForms Designer are
- a visual, palette-driven editor
- a source view of a XForms document
- integration with the standard Eclipse Properties, Outline, and Problems views
- an XML Instance view
- interfaces for easily binding XML instance data to XForms constructs
- the ability to drag and drop XML node references onto the editor surface
- the ability to view or update XForms attributes.
Aside from expediting the creation of XForms documents that adhere to the XForms 1.0 standard, Visual XForms Designer provides rendering assistance for several popular XForms content-rendering tools.
Visual XForms Designer complements other compound document-related solutions by providing a tool for building standards-compliant forms that could be used by industries such as government, insurance, banking, and health care.
This technology runs on Windows® and Linux® (see the Requirements section for details).
How does it work? Visual XForms Designer uses the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), Graphical Editing Framework (GEF), and Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP). Visual XForms Designer is tightly integrated with Eclipse and other Eclipse-based products and includes convenient user interface elements such as editors, context menus, wizards, preference pages, and other XForms- and XML-related views.
Furthermore, this product provides constructs for accelerating XForms-based design, such as type constraints, drop-down lists, text input, tree-based interfaces, and other graphical interface aides.
From these powerful graphical interfaces, the XForms document is serialized to an XML document that is built to include XForms elements and attributes compliant to the XForms 1.0 standard. The edited XForms document can immediately be rendered in popular XForms-capable rendering tools.
What's new in the recent update?
The August 31, 2006, update contains several enhancements:
- incorporation of the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) XML Editor, along with context assistance
- improvements to the design canvas
- improved XML instance document handling
- support for Eclipse 3.2
- support for Eclipse Web Tools 1.5 (WTP)
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| | About the technology author(s):
Jan Joseph Kratky, the technical leader for the development of the XML Forms Generator and Visual XForms Designer, is a member of the W3C XForms Working Group. A Sun Certified Java Programmer and Sun Certified Web Component Developer, Mr. Kratky has worked with Java technologies since 1997 and with Eclipse technologies since 2001. He is currently a software engineer with IBM Emerging Software Standards in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Kevin E. Kelly is an IBM senior technical staff member who works on software standards. Mr. Kelly has been a member of the W3C XForms Working Group and is chairman of the W3C Compound Document Formats Working Group. His focus is on developing open standards-based technologies for faster, more efficient standards adoption through XML-based and model-driven approaches.
Keith Wells a software engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Mr. Wells has been involved with Emerging Technologies and the Emerging Technologies Toolkit for several years. Currently, he is exploring opportunities with compound documents, model-driven development, software standards, and XML-based technologies.
Steve Speicher, the lead developer of the Compound XML Document Toolkit, is an IBM senior software engineer working on emerging standards. Mr. Speicher is a member of the W3C Compound Document Formats Working Group; he uses Model-Driven Development (MDD) to improve the development of standards. He has previously worked on "build" and SCM tools in the Rational division and in IBM internal tools.
The Workplace Forms Designer Team is located in Victoria, Canada.
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