Skeletal draft of input spec

[Micah Dubinko <micah@dubinko.info>]

This is probably deficient in numerous ways, but at least a start at a 
"everything a form author needs to know to become productive with UBL" 
document. Any kind of feedback is welcome.

Attached as Unicode plain text. Later, I have tools to convert this into 
XML, XHTML, etc.

.micah

-- 
  Available for consulting. XForms, web forms, information overload.
  Micah Dubinko                           mailto:micah@dubinko.info
  Brain Attic, L.L.C.                        http://brainattic.info
  Yahoo IM: mdubinko
  Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com

-- UBL Input Specification Guidelines
-------------------------------------

  <meta>

    Status: Early Draft

    Feedback: to ubl-hisc@lists.oasis-open.org

    Abstract: Everything a form author needs to know to become
    productive with UBL.

  </meta>

-- Glossary
-----------

  The following terms are used in this document.

  SBS -

  W3C -

  XForms -

-- Introduction
---------------

  Forms and XML have much in common--in both cases the technology
  represents a structured exchange of data, as opposed to a "blank page"
  philosophy of interaction. UBL in particular is an application of XML
  used to represent strutured business documents. Some work has been
  done as modeling this with contract semantics, as in
  http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-econtracts/200403/msg00004.html

  Within each document type, UBL defines a large number of XML elements
  and attributes; generally more than any single document will use. For
  this reason part of the job of writing forms against UBL is choosing
  the proper subset to map to form controls. One subset that is gaining
  traction is the "Small Business Subset" (once known as UBL Lite).

  For each data item in the Small Business Subset, these input
  specifications will list the following pieces of information:

  * The "data collection intent" for this item, without giving specific
  guidance (like "this is a radio button"). Technology-neutral
  terminology is taken from the W3C XForms specification.

  * The data storage location within the UBL XML, specified as XPath.

  * Whether the data item may store a computed value, and if so, the
  sources and expression (again in XPath) used.

  Additionally, for the overall form, the following information will be
  listed:

  * Overall navigation order, specified as a single bidirectional
  thread.


-- Form-Level Considerations
----------------------------

  TODO: For each document type
    Navigation order, as a list,


-- Data item-level Considerations
---------------------------------

  Reference: XPath for each data item:
  http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-hisc/200501/msg00009.html

  TODO: For each document type:
    For each data item:
      * list XPath, data collection intent, and anything else


-- Production Notes
-------------------

  This document originated as a plain-text Unicode file, using minimal
  structure. From there, it gets transformed into XML, XHTML, and other
  formats.