XForms has been described as follows:
XForms is an XML format used for collecting inputs from web forms. XForms was designed to be the next generation of HTML / XHTML forms, but is generic enough that it can also be used in a standalone manner or with presentation languages other than XHTML to describe a user interface and a set of common data manipulation tasks.
However, few or no implementations are currently maintained and suitable for general purposes. Some similar solutions have emerged within various projects, though their practical use is currently constrained, largely to web-oriented environments. Similarly, some proposals have trickled gently through a standardization process, without attracting enthusiasm for widespread acceptance or becoming represented by mature implementations.
The essential character of the desired solution is a balance between logical and visual concerns. It should provide a means for representing the overall structure of presentation, with respect to various form elements arranged in tables or hierarchies, or accessible through child forms for compound data, with greater control over appearance than may be inferred automatically from simply a schema intended for validation. It should not represent, however, visual nuances such as size, position, and style, as would be given in a user-interface design language.
The ultimate objective is a graphical configuration system supporting small pluggable modules that may be written without consideration of the details of the display environment, but may be rendered in desktop applications, especially applications targeted for Linux-based desktop environments.
Broadly, it may considered that design languages on one hand, versus schema languages on the other, leave open a space in the middle, seemingly neglected, for a conceptual representation of a presentable form elements. Why has XForms or any comparable projects tended not to succeed in filling this space?
Are any projects currently active, and supported by implementations on various platforms, for defining the logical structure of forms that may be rendered by a presentation layer?
Related to, but not duplicate of, some older questions, including the following:
