XML for Preferences

[Matthew Sergeant (EML)]

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 at userland.com]
> Sent:	Sunday, May 16, 1999 3:28 PM
> To:	xml-dev at 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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