Svante,
I'll admit I've never tried to do it. I do agree it would probably require programmatic support, at a minimum some scripting. So it might only be possible to provide some application hooks for rdf generation in the xforms, rather than actually to carry it out.
If you're intrigued by the idea, let me look at the example you cite, and I'll see what I can come up with.
John
On May 29, 2007, at 9:29 AM, Svante Schubert wrote: John,
Interesting thought, but I fear it could become a little more complicated.
John F. Madden, MD, PhD wrote: 837A6C61-664E-415C-B2D7-92C7F1B2D371@duke.edu" type="cite">Apropos XForms, I think a future agenda item for the metadata group definitely ought to be a mechanism for generating RDF from XForms.
I've thought about this a bit, and it shouldn't be hard. It could be done in a variety of ways.
Some technical details on XForms:
- The XML instance (the XML data file - currently in OOo only embedded in the content.xml) will always provide the data values from/for the form controls
- The form controls (e.g. fields) do not contain/duplicate the data, it is always solely in the XML instance
- There is a binding between the form control and XML data
837A6C61-664E-415C-B2D7-92C7F1B2D371@duke.edu" type="cite">The output of a standard XForm is typically some concrete xml; we'd just need to show how to add an rdf output stream and direct it to a metadata file.
Problems using metadata with RDF:
- The form control (e.g. field) even when identified by m:about/m:propert or xml:id, does not contain the content (only a binding)
- There is no way to bind RDF metadata directly to the XML instance, as usually a given schema for the XML instance does not allow xml:id or m:about / m:property or any other RDF binding mechanism
- Even if we would solve the binding problem (e.g. by defining to add the xml:id on the draw controls representing the data in the gui) I am not aware of an universal way to generate an RDF output stream from arbitrary XML instances (e.g. UBL XML to UBL RDF)
PS: You can find an example ODT XForms document containing an UBL instance in one of my previous mails (two files ODT package and flat format zipped):
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/office-metadata/email/archives/200609/msg00052.html
Svante
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