Experiences with User Interface Schema Definitions?

Question

On my current project, we're developing a "designer" tool (with GWT) that allows users to build forms in their browser. These forms are displayed in various channels (e.g. web, mobile, sms) to capture data and make decisions based on user input.

When I joined the project, it was in a proof-of-concept phase and the form definitions created where serialized as XML (using JAXB) with element names that seemed logical. Now that we're moving the PoC to production mode, we're thinking it might be better to change our form definitions to leverage something that's more "industry standard". If nothing else, it'll help with marketing. ;-)

I've found a number of options and wondering if anyone has experience using them.

• User Interface Markup Language (UIML)
• USer Interface eXtensible Markup Language (UsiXML)
• Numerous others: including AAIML, AUIML, XIML, XUL, XAML and XForms

If you've developed some sort of "form designer" tool that renders to multiple channels, I'd love to hear about your experience. Did you use some sort of industry standard to define your form elements, layout, etc. or did you come up with your own?

Thanks,

Matt

Answer 1

I work on Orbeon Forms, which is an XForms implementation. We primarily use XHTML + XForms to describe forms. I might be biased ;), but I have never seen anything that comes close to the power of XForms when it comes to describing forms.

In Orbeon Forms, we target browsers (mixed client/server-side implementation which doesn't require any plugin). But it would be perfectly feasible to target other devices based on the same description. We have also been busy for the last year and half doing a Form Builder, which now ships with Orbeon Forms.