Push Button Paradise

An Unexpected Gift 

Saturday I got a package from O'Reilly, a flat envelope, too skinny to be a book. It was a printed cover from the first run, suitable for framing. It's a bit too big to fit on my scanner, but maybe I can stitch two pieces together. -m

XForms Essentials is now Shipping 

Reader Jelks Cabaniss reports that printed copies of XForms Essentials are now out in the wild. I still haven't got mine yet, though. Hmm.

Unlike a certain other XForms book, you can see what you're getting with XForms Essentials--the full text is online at my website. If you'd like a paper version, you can order it from that page as well. -m

Welcome! 

Mitch Kapor has Switched.

He also includes a nifty personal computer history. Mine is far less impressive, but here it goes:

1983-4 Timex Sinclair
1985-6 Atari 800XL
1987-2001 Various PC-compatibles running DOS/Windows
2002 Linux
2003 PowerBook/OS X

-m

SkunkLink comments 

"I like SkunkLink. It is "The simplest thing that could possibly work." - Joe Gregorio

Some interesting comments on Echo/Atom/Pie, and a long shot that the skunk (or something along those lines) could be used. -m

Annoying IE bug #7420123 

You want to iterate through all the form fields in a document. One of them is named 'length'. Don't do this:

for (var idx=0; idx < document.myform.elements.length; idx++)

Instead, you need to keep incrementing idx until elements[idx] returns undefined. As a bonus, the revised techinque runs about 3x faster.

P.S. Netscape 7.1 not only handles the original code properly, it also runs it about 12x faster. -m

Some Chandler/XSLT goodness

Speaking of which, I've been struggling to find a suitable application to keep track of all my working notes, be it on a book, a day job, or evening projects. In about a year, Chandler will be it, but I need something now.

Paper. Mmmmm. I bought a few "computation notebooks", and a nice leather holder with carrry handles. So far, I've been filling up a full Letter-size sheet of paper for each day's work.

At first it seems like keeping all these notes would be a lot of hassle. Really, it's not--while you're in the middle of something, it's easy to take some brief notes. (Coming back later to write documentation is the time-consuming part.) What's more, you don't realize until you try it how many times you need to refer back to what you were doing yesterday or last week. Having it all down in ink helps reduce thrashing and gives you a channel for focusing your thoughts and working more productively.

The big drawback of paper is, of course, that it's pretty hard to search, make backup copies, access from multiple locations, or integrate with other data sources. For now, though, it does what I need at the moment. -m

Update: InfoPath pricing

$199 USD. Even taking into acount the 17.5% VAT included in the eariler UK prices, it's still cheaper on this side of the pond. The confirmed retail-availability date is 21 October. -m

Sample chapter online

Chapter 2, "XForms Building Blocks". Beware, however, that this is not the final text. It looks like the first review proofs, so you'll probably find small typographical problems. Also, I added several screen shots to that particular chapter, to illustrate each step of the code. -m

I'm looking for testimonials about XForms Essentials. Is there anything you particularly liked about the book? Has it helped you accomplish some specific task? Did you benefit from having it available before publication?

These will appear on the Web and on printed hand-outs I give to interested audiences. The testimonials will *not* appear in the printed book itself. If that should change (say, for a second printing) I will individually ask again for permission.

Please respond to mdubinko@yahoo.com. -m

On O'Reilly weblogs: 10 Things I learned while writing a book. -m

Amazon UK briefly let slip pricing for Office 2003 components. Of primary interest to me was what they'd charge for InfoPath. £179.99. At today's exchange rate, that's $289.39 US.

Remember, the deployment model requires every user who interacts with an XML form to have a full copy of InfoPath.

Availability is said to be October 24. -m

Dorothea Salo responds favorably to my recent story on XMLhack. -m

Unhidden email address.

This page now includes a normal, non-obsfucated email address. It's not that the spam problem has gotten any better. It's that tools are good enough that I don't care.

I use SpamBayes for Outlook at work, and whatever Yahoo! uses internally for the above address. -m

An interesting Talkback article by Gary Edwards over on ZDNet.

Two bits caught my eye. First, the opening sentence: The OASIS Open Office XML File Format will support both XForms and SVG W3C Standards. Great! Second, the mention of "OpenPath", an OpenOffice workalike of InfoPath by Michael Brauer and Daniel Vogelheim. Anyone who knows more about this, please email me. -m

The animal on the cover of XForms Essentials is a vulturine guinea fowl (Acryillium vulturinum). This African family of birds belongs to the same order as chachalacas, chickens, curassows, grouse, guans, hoatzins, mesites, partridges, pheasants, quail, and turkeys. Sometimes called the Royal guinea fowl-as the tallest and most colorful species-the Vulturine guinea fowl earned the name because of its vulture-like head and neck. In contrast, its plumage sports black and white dots and stripes on a background of lilac and cobalt blue.

Vulturine guinea fowl breed well, with a clutch of 4-8 eggs, laying several clutches if the eggs disappear. After the eggs hatch, the male feeds and protects the chicks for the first few days.

Vulturine guinea fowl thrive in the heat and bright sun of eastern Africa, spending their days foraging primarily in open dry scrublands for grasses, leaves, and other green vegetation. This diet provides them with nearly all of the moisture they require, letting them survive for long periods without water. These tall birds-24 inches (60 centimeters)-are easily spotted walking through the brush, usually in flocks of 20-25, but regularly seen in flocks of 70. In the right conditions they will consume enormous quantities of insects, and also dine on berries and seeds. The flock generally escapes from predators by running swiftly, flying as a last resort, although the flock also flies when it roosts in trees at nightfall, and the otherwise quiet birds make their characteristic cry, which resembles creaking wagon wheels.

The ancient Greeks and Romans domesticated these birds, and guinea fowl even figure in a Greek myth. When the hero Meleager (whose name means guinea fowl) was slain-after defending the honor of the huntress Atalanta-the goddess Artemis turned his sisters Gorge and Deianira (the wife of Heracles) into guinea fowl, which Artemis considered her sacred birds. However, the god Dionysus begged Artemis to return the two women (known as the Meleagrids) to their human form, and she did.

-m

On Index Editing

I was recently given the job of proofreading an index. None of the actual text of the book was available at that moment, just the index.

Interesting problem.

If you ever find yourself in that situation, here's a few techniques I worked out (with helpful advice from published authors Kaitlin Duck Sherwood and Edd Dumbill):

1) Just Read It

Just read the thing from A to Z (or in this specific case, from != to A to Z). You can find all kinds of inconsistencies that way, like adjacent entries where the 2nd one is a misspelling.

2) Focus Grouping

Take focused groups of terms (in this case CSS selectors and XForms model item properties) and try to locate them up one by one. Chances are you'll find missing terms, and other inconsistencies.

3) Late-breaking Changes

Whatever things most recently changed in the main text are most likely to be horked in the index. Go over those carefully.

4) Free Association

Pick a term at random. Think about related stuff. See if the related terms show up in the index. Repeat until exhausted.

The one thing that doesn't make sense is to try to go through the whole index, actually looking up each term. Like I said earlier, I didn't have the latest text (which was being repaginated anyway). Those new-fangled computer thingys do a pretty good job of keeping track of what lands on what page, so a manual check doesn't add any benefit.

The endgame is drawing to a close. The first copies should be rolling of the presses by the end of this month. -m

XForms 1.0 at PR

OK, it's been reported everywhere but here, but XForms 1.0 is out as a Proposed Recommendation. Slashdot even picked it up, but take anything you read there with a salt lick.

According to the W3C Process, W3C member companies will have four weeks to cast a ballot accepting as-is, accepting with minor changes, or rejecting the move to final Recommendation which usually happens about 3 weeks after the original four weeks are past. The way the Process is set up, with continuous reviews requiring mandatory responses, it's very rare for a specification to be voted down at PR (although several documents seem to be stuck at PR and other stages).

It seems likely, however, that XForms will march on to the end. SVG and XHTML are poised to incorporate XForms support. Implementation support is as good as you could expect, (including drop-in support for IE and any Flash6-enabled device) with the test suite results updated through XForms itself.

So while it feels like it's getting harder and slower to get things done at the W3C, things still are getting done, and boy does it feel good. -m