Re: request for new forms submission consensus

Christopher.McRae@library.ucsf.edu (Christopher McRae)
Message-id: <199310171927.AA17807@library.ucsf.edu>
From: Christopher.McRae@library.ucsf.edu (Christopher McRae)
Organization: UCSF Center for Knowledge Management
Email: mcrae@ckm.ucsf.edu or uunet!mcrae
Phone: 415/476-3577
Fax: 415/476-4653
To: www-talk@library.ucsf.edu
Cc: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:18:16 -0000
	<9310121218.AA27649@manuel.hpl.hp.com> 
Subject: Re: request for new forms submission consensus 
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1993 12:34:04 PDT
Sender: Christopher.McRae@library.ucsf.edu

Dave Raggett writes:
> Frans van Hoesel has pointed out the value in being able to
> use a checkbox or an icon or whatever to submit forms. In 
> a tax return there might be a load of questions that become
> irrelevant when you click the checkbox to indicate that you
> are "single". In this case the form would be submitted and
> the server would then return it with the irrelevant questions
> greyed-out:
> 
>	 Single? <INPUT NAME="single" TYPE=checkbox SUBMIT>
> 
> The idea here is to make SUBMIT an independent attribute
> that can be used with arbitrary field types. You could
> have multiple "submit buttons" in the same form. This way
> authors can choose whether the form contents gets checked
> after each field on a per field basis.

  Why not allow/define the use of MIME multipart messages for such applications?
That is, rather than using the SUBMIT attribute as above to retreive a
customized version of the form, why not include named sections of a document
section and define EXPAND/COLLAPSE attributes to control display?  For instance,

    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
        boundary=unique-boundary-1

    --unique-boundary-1
    Content-Type: application/html-form

    [some stuff here]
    <INPUT NAME="single" TYPE=checkbox EXPAND=single_form COLLAPSE=couple_form>
    [more stuff here]

    --unique-boundary-1
    Content-Type: application/html-form
    Part-Name: single_form

    [ single-specific stuff goes here ]

    --unique-boundary-1--
    Content-Type: application/html-form
    Part-Name: couple_form

    [ couple-specific stuff goes here ]

    --unique-boundary-1--

  Note that one could also use only one of EXPAND or COLLAPSE to toggle display
of a document section as opposed to selecting between alternate sections.

Another example:
<SELECT SEVERAL NAME="what-to-do">
<LI EXPAND=book_selection_form> Read A Book
<LI EXPAND=walking_trail_map> Take a Walk
<LI EXPAND=bagelry_menu> Buy a Bagel
<LI EXPAND=tv_guide> Watch TV
</SELECT>

  This model would work well for those applications where the overhead of
transferring possibly irrelevant sections of a document was low relative to
the overhead of performng multiple GETs.

Chris
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher McRae			mail: mcrae@ckm.ucsf.edu
UCSF Center for Knowledge Management	at&t: 415/476-3577
530 Parnassus Avenue, Box 0840	 	fax: 415/476-4653
San Francisco, California 94143