Using XForms for interfaces to XML data

XForms is a high-level tool for defining user interfaces to XML data. With a design based on years of experience with the simple forms of HTML, XForms systematically distinguishes between the model (the information structures being edited, in the form of sets of XML documents) and the user interface and its appearance. As an XML vocabulary, XForms is embeddable in arbitrary host document languages; its user interface widgets can easily be represented in different ways for different devices and users. Forms of arbitrarily complex fixed structure can be easily represented in XForms. Mixed content, variable-depth recursion, and structural modifications to the model are more challenging. This introduction to XForms provides an overview of its capabilities and current limits and the prospects for overcoming them.