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Stefane Fermigier · Guest

Open source Eclipse/SWT XForms engine released
==============================================

Abstract: Nuxeo as released the source code for an open source XForms
engine for SWT and Eclipse, that will be used in the Apogee project to
build rich client applications for collaboration and ECM.

[1]Nuxeo, a french open source ISV specialised in Enterprise Content
Management, has just published the code for an [2]XForms engine for
[3]SWT and [4]Eclipse.

[1] http://www.nuxeo.com/
[2] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/
[3] http://www.eclipse.org/swt/
[4] http://www.eclipse.org/

This engine will be used in the [5]Apogee project recently submitted
as a [6]proposal to the Eclipse Foundation. Apogee aims at building a
framework to create ECM-oriented desktop applications, independent
from vendor or technologies. This framework could be used to create
applications that will be integrated with [7]Documentum,
[8]Interwoven, Nuxeo [9]CPS or any ECM platform.

[5]
http://blogs.nuxeo.com/sections/blogs/eric_barroca/2006_02_14_eclipse-apogee-ecm-platform-proposal-online/
[6] http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/apogee/
[7] http://www.documentum.com/
[8] http://www.interwoven.com/
[9] http://www.cps-project.org/

As [10]Eric Barroca, project manager for Apogee, wrote in his blog:

[10] http://blogs.nuxeo.com/sections/blogs/eric_barroca/

"The Nuxeo XForms engine allows to :
* Generate Eclipse/SWT forms from a XForms document
* Dynamically validate inputs against an XML Schema without
generating an XML document (yes, it's dynamic XSD validation for
Eclipse/SWT forms Smile

)
* For developers, introspect and test their XForms document (through
a dedicated editor)

For us, this new plugin opens new perspectives for Rich Client
applications : all user interface forms can be dynamically defined by
the server. It's another step in unifying web interfaces and rich
client applications... one form to design to create the UI in the
browser and in the rich client application. One more step for the Web
and Desktop convergence!

The XForms engine is generating Eclipse/SWT Forms from an XHTML/XForms
document and an optional XML Schema and CSS stylesheet. This first
release supports only a subset of the XForms standard is supported for
now (more feature will be added in future), but still, it's really
usable and useful for many needs.

The XML Schema is used for automatically validation of the generated
forms. You can find more details about XML Schema support are in XML
Schema Support section.

The stylesheet defines the form layout for the SWT rendering."

The code for the XForms engine is available in Nuxeo's SVN repository:
[11]http://svn.nuxeo.org/pub/Apogee/src/ (in the
org.nuxeo.xforms.core, org.nuxeo.xforms.ui and
org.nuxeo.xforms.ui.editors modules), and also available via a
[12]Trac project management interface.

There is also some [13]documentation available.

[11] http://svn.nuxeo.org/pub/Apogee/src/
[12] http://svn.nuxeo.org/trac/pub/browser/Apogee/src/trunk/
[13] http://svn.nuxeo.org/trac/pub/browser/Apogee/doc/XForms/