XML News from Sunday, November 5, 2006

The W3C XForms working group has posted the fourth public working draft of XForms 1.1. Changes since 1.0 include:

• A new namespace URI, http://www.w3.org/2004/xforms/
• power, luhn, current, choose, id and property XPath extension functions
• An email address datatype
• An ID card number datatype
• A prompt action element
• An xforms-close event
• An xforms-submit-serialize event
• Inline rendering of non-text media types

Major changes I noted in this draft include:

• For element instance, XForms 1.1 provides a new optional attribute resource that provides an xsd:anyURI link to externally defined initial instance data.
• The days-to-date(number) and seconds-to-dateTime(number) function returns a string containing an xsd:date for the date that occured that many days/seconds since midnight January 1, 1970.
• The local-date() function returns an xsd:date for the current time in the current time zone.
• encode() and decode() functions for converting strings to and from hex or base-64.
• digest() and hamc() functions for calculating hash functions.
• A random() generates a uniformly distributed random or pseudorandom number between 0.0 and 1.0.
• XPath expressions can be used to specify values.
• The submission element allows an optional serialize attribute. If the value of this attribute is false, then instance data is not serialized or submitted.
• The replace attribute of submission supports the additional value of text. If this setting is made, and the submission response conforms to an XML mediatype (as defined by the content type specifiers in [RFC 3023]) or a text media type (as defined by a content type specifier of text/*), then the response data is encoded as text and replaces the content of the replacement target node.
• HTTP headers can be controlled from the XForm submission.
• Support help and hint in item and choices has been removed.

The W3C Web API Working Group has updated Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Specification working draft. "This specification defines the Document Object Model Events Level 3, a generic platform- and language-neutral event system which allows registration of event handlers, describes event flow through a tree structure, and provides basic contextual information for each event. The Document Object Model Events Level 3 builds on the Document Object Model Events Level 2."