Proceedings

Abstract:

This paper addresses the use of the W3C XForms standard in a general-purpose office application.

XForms allows for the manipulation and processing of highly structured XML content while providing means of input validation and business logic inside the form. Through the integration of XForms support into an office application, the user is enabled to work with arbitrarily structured XML data in a convenient and well-known environment.

The XForms integration into StarOffice and OpenOffice.org that the author shows here supports the user in the design phase of the form, as well as during data entry and validation in the deployed form.

Form design and data entry are integrated into the existing program modules allowing the user to work with forms in a known environment.

Due to the standardization of XForms, the forms are usable with any other XForms compliant application. This enables the use of a general purpose productivity suite to work with arbitrarily structured XML data, where otherwise specifically customized tools would be needed. The special benefit of this particular combination is the possibility of combining structured data and free form content into a single document.

Since the OASIS Open Office XML format is used for free form content, all information that was entered by the user is stored in a well-structured and standardized way which can be processed by any given application throughout a work flow. For instance, XSLT can be used to create any required XML format from the combination of XForms instance data and document content.

Examples will be given to demonstrate the outlined combination of standards into the OpenOffice.org application, including the manipulation of OASIS UBL instance data through a customized form and the preparation of an XML 2004 conference paper in OpenOffice.org through the combination of XForms, XML based word processing and XSLT.