Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography that he was disappointed in the in the magazine industry that would shut down the productive and useful magazine publication titled "Our Young Folks".
In the years just before the Civil War, New York was already a metropolis of more than a half million people where the rumble of loaded wagons, the stamping of big dray horses, and the hooting of tugboats on the rivers were never stilled. Ugly, overcrowded, and dirty, the city was sharply divided between rich and poor. While the Renaissance palaces of the wealthy were beginning to march uptown along Fifth Avenue, the poor huddled in foul, ratinfested slums such as the notorious Five Points in lower Manhattan. "All that is loathsome and decayed is here," observed the touring Charles Dickens. Only a few miles away, what Edith Wharton described as the fashionable "pioneers of the younger set" were taking over rows of stolid brownstones newly erected in the tree-shrouded streets adjoining Gramercy Park. "Thee," Roosevelt and his wife, Georgia-born Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, were among the most engaging couples in this society.
Tall, handsome, and with a leonine head, Roosevelt had a glossy chestnut beard and the natural grace of an athlete. He was the youngest of the five surviving sons of old Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt who, along with William B. Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and A. T. Stewart, was one of the city's wealthiest men. Although active in Roosevelt & Son, the family glass-importing business in Maiden Lane, Thee was more interested in charitable work and philanthropy, which eventually became his main interest."Mittie" Roosevelt was a reigning beauty of Knickerbocker society. Fine-featured and with lustrous, jet-black hair, she had a tiny waist and coral-tinged skin that was, according to her daughter Anna, "the purest and most delicate white, more moonlightwhite than cream-white." Every day she took two baths, and she wore white both summer and winter.
The Roosevelt family had lived in New York City for more than two centuries, but after Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., became president, he insisted that his background was quite ordinary. For example, in his Autobiography he described Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt, the family's founding father in America, as "our very common ancestor" and observed he had come over from the Netherlands in the seventeenth-century version of steerage. In reality, however, this was part of a conscious effort to skew accounts of his life, to downplay the advantages of a privileged background to bridge the chasm between himself and most Americans. Roosevelt was not a common man, and he knew it. Nevertheless, he wished to share the thoughts and aspirations of the average American-and if this created a somewhat synthetic personality, it was an intellectual rather than a moral failing.
Claes settled in New Amsterdam, the struggling Dutch settlement at the tip of Manhattan, sometime before 1648. Like that of many immigrants to America before and since, his past is a recordless blank. One of the few clues is his name, which rendered into English is Nicholas, son of Martin, of the Field of Roses. In those days, Dutchmen took in addition to their baptismal name that of their father and the locality from which they came. The family name, spelled a dozen different ways in the records - Roosevelt, Rosewelt, and Rosvelt among others-indicates that the ancestral home of the Roosevelts was the island of Tholen in the province of Zeeland, where a Van Rosevelt family was once prominent. Their family motto, Qui Plantavit Curabit - He Who Has Planted Will Preserve-was adopted by the American Roosevelts. The family name is pronounced by all its branches as "Rose-uh-velt."
Certain leaders have learned how they can use moral purpose to empower them to inspire and lead their membership toward achieving a strong competitive advantage. In TR's day political economists were not to blame for the commentary, rather the general attitude of the writers, used when penning the comments of that generation. McKinley's 'Silver Certificates' were just and right for the burst of production that occurred near the the Great Lakes. Opportunity and growth was flooding from this Ohio well, to low spots all over the United States. It had even affected the lights of downtown Tokyo, as well as the breakfasts being served in London.
A publication focusing on individual development complete with virtues such as TR's favorite magazine was "Boy's Life". The publication of the Boy Scout's in the USA available into the 21st century.
Sen. Barack Obama defended himself and his wife against suggestions that they are not patriotic.
Editor Note: This is almost an American 'Fairy Tale'
After a town hall meeting in Lorain, Ohio, a reporter asked Obama about "an attempt by conservatives and Republicans to paint you as unpatriotic."
...and why not?, THIS GUY (Obama) HAS SOME VERY SERIOUS UN-PATRIOTIC ISSUES HERE!
The reporter cited the fact that Obama once failed to put his hand over his heart while singing the national anthem.
More evidence demonstrates that this was systemic and happened more that once in Obama's life...
Obama replied that his choice not to put his hand on his heart is a behavior that "would disqualify about three-quarters of the people who have ever gone to a football game or baseball game."
Are these baseball games played in Indonesia? I have seen hundreds of ball games in over a score of US cities and never saw this 'Heart' problem in the good old USA!
The reporter also noted that the Illinois senator does not wear an American flag lapel pin,
I heard he was approached by a Veteran, given a pin and promptly stuck it in his pocket. Where is THAT pin? I also recall his speech on how 'Right' it was to not wear THAT pin!
has met with former members of the radical anti-Vietnam War group, Weather Underground,
More than 'just' good neighbors!
and his wife was quoted recently as saying she never felt really proud of the United States until recently.
Read her college paper and you will see what she ment here!
Asked how he would fight the image of being unpatriotic, Obama said, "There's always some nonsense going on in general elections. Right? If it wasn't this, it would be something else. If you recall, first it was my name. Right? That was a problem. And then there was the Muslim e-mail thing and that hasn't worked out so well, and now it's the patriotism thing.
Always something, perhaps this is really the Obama problem?
"The way I will respond to it is with the truth: that I owe everything I am to this country," he said.
I'd love to hear the TRUTH about that meeting in the White House! Who really is lying?
The first-term senator from Illinois has been the subject of various debunked rumors since launching his presidential campaign -- allegations that he is a Muslim, that he took his oath of office on a copy of the Quran and that he attended a radical Islamic school while living in Indonesia as a boy.
I don't think a hack news writer or a bankrupt network(s) has debunked any of this stuff. Seems it persists longer than the Rose Law firm missing file folders.
"You will recall that the reason I came to national attention was a speech in which I spoke of my love of this country," said Obama.
Did he mention he had not won an election what with the success challenging his opponents endorsements! Was not the speech in Germany 'over the top'!
He and his wife, Michelle, had already explained her comments. "She simply misspoke," he said. "What she was referring to was [that] this was the first time she has been proud of politics in America.
Yeah sure...
"That's true of a lot of people who have been cynical and disenchanted. And she's spoken about how she has been cynical about American politics for a very long time, but she's proud of how people are participating and getting involved in ways that they haven't in a very long time."
About not wearing an American flag lapel pin, Obama said Republicans have no lock on patriotism.
Beg to differ here...
"A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor they needed, or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans' benefits that these troops need when they come home, or are undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary?
Did not the Democrats hold up each of these items? While they frittered away our home equity....
"That is a debate I am very happy to have. We'll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism."
I'd love to see it! I know the outcome!
Obama did not respond to the question about the Weather Underground, a group whose members bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during the 1970s.
There are a lot of us that would love to hear an answer that is an actual response!
Last February, the New York Sun reported that as an Illinois state senator in 2001, Obama accepted a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founder of the group who was not convicted for the bombings and now works as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Not much info in disclosing the ties to a huge Chicago Political machine. Can we expect the truth before the polls open?
But the paper said that, in a statement, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, William Burton, said, "Sen. Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence ... But he was an 8-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost 40 years ago is ridiculous." Right, ridiculous...
Former first lady Sen. Hillary Clinton has said repeatedly that she is a stronger candidate because she has already shown she can withstand conservative attacks.
And, wake up when the phone rings at 3:00AM! JoeNovell
Founder and Executive Director of the American Muslim Council Islamic affairs advisor for the Clinton administration "We are all supporters of Hamas . . . I am also a supporter of Hezbollah." Arrested in 2003 for terrorist fundraising
A self-described Muslim moderate, Abdurahman Alamoudi is the founder and Executive Director of the American Muslim Council (AMC). In past years, he was also a Board member of American Muslims for Jerusalem; a Board member of the Council on National Interest Foundation; a Board member of Interfaith Impact for Justice and Peace; the head of the American Task Force for Bosnia; a founding trustee of the Fiqh Council of North America; the Washington, DC regional representative for the Islamic Society of North America; a Board member of Mercy International; President of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada; Executive Assistant to the President of the SAAR Foundation; Secretary of the Success Foundation; Director of the Talibah International Aid Association; a Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); and a Board member of the Somali Relief Fund. Moreover, he served as an Islamic Affairs advisor for the Clinton administration, a Pentagon appointee in charge of choosing Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military, and a State Department "goodwill ambassador" to Muslim nations.
An FBI insider once described Alamoudi as an "expert in the art of deception" because of his abilty to appear to be a moderate Muslim while privately embracing a radical anti-American agenda. Behind the scenes, much of Alamoudi's energy was devoted to fundraising activities on behalf of Hamas, Hezbollah, Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. He also had dealings with the Libyan regime of Muammar Qadhafi.
Born in Eritrea, Alamoudi immigrated to the United States in 1979 (and would become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1996). From 1985 to 1990, he served as Executive Assistant to the President of the Saudi-funded SAAR Foundation in northern Virginia.
Alamoudi founded AMC in 1990 for the purpose of engaging the American Muslim community in both national and international issues of interest to them. In 1991 he established the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC), whose purpose was to "certify Muslim chaplains hired by the military."
He courted both the Democratic and Republican parties during the 1992 presidential election cycle. When Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, Alamoudi stepped up his donations to the Democratic Party in an effort to develop a closer relationship with the party in control of the White House. Alamoudi's access to Clinton insiders grew as the decade wore on.
In 1993 the Defense Department certified AMAFVAC as one of two organizations (the other was the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences) authorized to approve and endorse Muslim chaplains.
In March 1993 Alamoudi disparaged the federal government's terrorism allegations against Mohammed Salameh, who had been arrested ten days after the first World Trade Center bombings in February. "All their [law enforcement] facts ... are flimsy," said Alamoudi. "We don't think that any of those facts that they have against him, or the fact that they searched his home and they found a few wires here or there -- are not enough." (Salameh was eventually convicted in the bombing plot and was sentenced to life in prison.)
From about 1993 to 1998, the Pentagon would retain Alamoudi on an unpaid basis to nominate and approve Muslim chaplain candidates for the U.S. military. Among the chaplains Alamoudi hired was James Yee, who would eventually be arrested in 2003 on suspicion of espionage.
In 1995 Alamoudi helped President Clinton and the ACLU develop a presidential guideline entitled "Religious Expression in Public School," which paved the way for the abolition of Christian symbols, such as the Nativity scene, from public school grounds. In November of that year, Alamoudi and 23 other Muslim leaders met with President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. On December 8, Clinton's National Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, met with Alamoudi and several other AMC Board members. On February 8, 1996, Hillary Clinton penned a newspaper column based on talking points provided by Alamoudi. Later that month, Mrs. Clinton asked AMC to draw up a guest list for a reception marking the end of Ramadan that was to be held at the White House.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, while Alamoudi portrayed himself as a "moderate" to the media and to the Washington elite, he offered occasional glimpses into the sympathy he felt for the enemies of Israel and America alike:
In 1994 he said: "Hamas is not a terrorist group. … I have followed the good work of Hamas. ... They have a wing that is a violent wing. They had to resort to some kind of violence."
During a March 26, 1996 appearance on Middle East TV, Alamoudi said the following about Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) founder Musa Abu Marzook, who in 1997 would be deported from the United States because of his Hamas-related activities: "I am honored to be a member of the committee that is defending Musa Abu Marzook in America. … I really consider him to be from among the best people in the Islamic movement, Hamas … and I work together with him."
On December 29, 1996, Alamoudi told a meeting of the IAP: "I think if we were outside this country, we can say, 'Oh, Allah, destroy America,' but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it. You can be violent anywhere else but in America."
In October 2000, Alamoudi attended an anti-Israel protest outside the White House. Speaking to a group of Palestinian-terrorist-supporters, he declared: "I have been labeled … as being a supporter of Hamas. Anybody supporters of Hamas here? … We are all supporters of Hamas ... I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah."
Alamoudi defended Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh imprisoned for his role in plotting New York-area terrorist attacks -- most notably the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Starting in 2000, Alamoudi illegally began making regular trips to Libya, where he met with government officials to discuss strategies by which they could create "headaches" for Saudi Arabia. Alamoudi would later admit that he was involved in a scheme to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi.
In January 2001, Alamoudi attended a conference in Beirut with leaders of numerous terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda.
On September 28, 2003, Alamoudi was arrested in Washington, DC for illegally failing to notify the U.S. State Department of his numerous trips to Libya and for illegally accepting $10,700 from the Libyan mission to the United Nations. Earlier that same month, British customs officials had found $340,000 in cash in Alamoudi's luggage -- money that, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement affidavit -- originated in Libya and was intended for distribution in Syria, where terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad maintain a strong presence.
After Alamoudi's arrest, federal authorities released a transcript of a telephone conversation in which he could be heard lamenting that no Americans had died during al Qaeda's 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. In the same conversation, Alamoudi also recommended that more operations be conducted like the 1994 Hezbollah bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association cultural center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died.
On July 30, 2004 Alamoudi pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, for which he faced a maximum sentence of 23 years in prison. Said Paul McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia: "This conviction is a milestone in the war on terrorism. Alamoudi was a major player in the financial support of terrorism."
In the summer 2007 Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial (which looked into evidence of HLF's fundraising on behalf of Hamas), the U.S. government released a list of approximately 300 of HLF's "unindicted co-conspirators" and "joint venturers." Among the unindicted co-conspirators were many individuals affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas, including Abdurahman Alamoudi, Omar Ahmad, Yousef al-Qaradawi, Abdallah Azzam, Jamal Badawi, Mohammad Jaghlit, Mousa Abu Marzook, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and Ahmed Yassin. The list also included groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Hamas, INFOCOM, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the United Association for Studies and Research, and the North American Islamic Trust.
On July 30, 2004 he pled guilty to three charges of illegal dealings with Libya, after admitting that he participated in a plot to murder Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for Muammar al-Gaddafi and accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from top Libyan officials, in addition to tax and immigration violations. He was sentenced to 23 years in jail.
David Safavian, the White House Chief Procurement officer, indicted in 2005 and charged with obstructing a criminal probe, has also been linked to Al-Amoudi by federal prosecutors.
Al-Amoudi is a co-founder of Ptech, Inc., an enterprise software company charged with ties to terrorists (though to date, no evidence has been found), which had a client roster on September 11, 2001 that included several US Government agencies involved in failures to prevent the September 11, 2001 attacks. As of May, 2004, Ptech still had contracts with federal agencies including the White House.
Val and I watched the debate together as the prompt for the cell phone poll came into the screen view. I urged her to vote and later I placed mine. We left the Fox channel when the vote was Palin 86% Biden 12%. The next morning I found following at several Fox sites...
The web produced the following examples......
I just checked the Fox News web site to find the results of their cell phone text message poll that they promoted tonight. Totally unscientific of course...they all are. But I found it most peculiar that at the exact same time they were announcing on TV that Palin won with like 91% of the vote (yeah...right), their website had it 61-39 for BIDEN! Hmmmm....
phillbo...@gmail.com View profileOn Oct 2, 11:06 pm, "Dano"
I have been trying to find online links for both MSNBC and FOX's text polls and have not found them. The two polls you are referencing are different... check more carefully. I saw what you were talking about during my search and you are mixing up polls here. If anyone has links to the final results it would be appreciated. I watched both channels coverage and here are the final numbers I saw for each. FOX- Palin 88% Biden 12%, MSNBC- Palin 26% Biden 74%. Fox claimed over a million votes and showed their results throughout the coverage. MSNBC only showed the results once briefly at the end of Chris Matthews' coverage and made no mention of numbers of received votes. (shrug) - Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text - More options Oct 3, 2:29 am
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv From: phillbo...@gmail.com Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2008 02:29:17 -0700 (PDT) Local: Fri, Oct 3 2008 2:29 am Subject: Re: Fox news debate poll Reply | Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author On Oct 2, 11:06 pm, "Dano" wrote:
> I just checked the Fox News web site to find the results of their cell phone > text message poll that they promoted tonight. Totally unscientific of > course...they all are. But I found it most peculiar that at the exact same > time they were announcing on TV that Palin won with like 91% of the vote > (yeah...right), their website had it 61-39 for BIDEN! Hmmmm....
> Look quick before they change this.
> http://elections.foxnews.com/
> Who won the vice presidential debate Thursday?
> Sarah Palin 39%
> Joe Biden 61%
> Total Voters:117669
I have been trying to find online links for both MSNBC and FOX's text polls and have not found them. The two polls you are referencing are different... check more carefully. I saw what you were talking about during my search and you are mixing up polls here.
If anyone has links to the final results it would be appreciated. I watched both channels coverage and here are the final numbers I saw for each. FOX- Palin 88% Biden 12%, MSNBC- Palin 26% Biden 74%. Fox claimed over a million votes and showed their results throughout the coverage. MSNBC only showed the results once briefly at the end of Chris Matthews' coverage and made no mention of numbers of received votes. (shrug)
Oh, I had no doubt they were different. I can't find those results either. Utterly worthless anyway as I'm sure you know. I was hopping around after the debate to sample reaction from as many POVs as possible. When I saw the silly text message poll on Fox, I decided to mess with them by voting a bunch of times for Biden. I knew what the results would be, but I was amazed that you could vote as many times as you liked. I have unlimited messaging on my plan, so I found it was really easy to keep re-sending as much as I pleased....which I did. I almost missed the results, but I happened to click back to Fox at the right time on Van Susstern's show. They claimed Palin won by over 90%. Yeah...right.
> If anyone has links to the final results it would be appreciated. I > watched both channels coverage and here are the final numbers I saw > for each. FOX- Palin 88% Biden 12%, MSNBC- Palin 26% Biden 74%. Fox > claimed over a million votes and showed their results throughout the > coverage. MSNBC only showed the results once briefly at the end of > Chris Matthews' coverage and made no mention of numbers of received > votes. (shrug)
Yup...I missed their's too. These message polls are simply a promotional vehicle for the cell phone carriers. These polls could not possibly be less scientific. I just happen to pay for unlimited texting in order for us to stay in easy contact with our daughters.
The Scandia Kicksled is a bit of Norwegian genius known as a"Spark". (Spark means kick in Norwegian). The operator skis, steering with the handlebars and there is a seat for a passenger or cargo. The kicksled is a great way to have fun on snow and ice, and a terrific way to stay in shape. It is also a great alternative to cross-country skiing.
There are footrests on each runner and the operator kicks into the snow to gain speed and glide. Steering is done with wooden handlebars. Just like any sports equipment, the Scandia Kicksled has its special environments for use - hard packed snow or ice: and flat, rolling landscapes. There can be loose snow on top of the hard packed base, but powder is definitely what we don't want. Poly Snow Runners increase the versatility.
The Scandia Kicksled is a fun way to enjoy winter as you "spark" or kick your way over snow and ice, regardless of your physical conditions. When you're ready for a break, just relax on the built in seat.
The cost of a kicksled is similar to the cost of ski equipment, probably less. We sell four different sizes of kicksleds and the costs vary with the size of the sled. We also have accessories available.
The Fridtjof Nansen kicksleds that we import are from Norway. We have traveled throughout Scandinavia and regularly compare kicksleds from other manufacturers. We have found the Nansen kicksleds to be the best quality product.
What are its features?
The 2 Adult and 1 medium kicksleds are made of natural Birch wood, with epoxy coated black steel runners and bumper. The child's kicksled is red epoxy coated steel except the birch wood seat and handlebars with gray steel runners. All sled runners are spring steel. They are easy to fold flat by unscrewing a bolt for storage or transport.
Attachable 2 inch Poly Snow Runners, Ice Walkers for better foot traction. Child Seats, Snow Plow, Basket, Light & Compass/Bell are optional equipment.
Thanks for the post. I've spent the better part of the last year building an application based on XQuery, XHTML, and JavaScript with RESTful leanings. I imagine the comparable acronym to be XRJ (JRX doesn't come off very well).
From experience I agree with the observation that reducing data translation greatly increases the ROI of the development process. Although I continue to encounter quite a bit of ugliness with JavaScript, it plays an important role in my application and fits into the XQuery/XML architecture quite well. There is a lot of room for improvement of course.
Looking forward to digging into the proper XRX architecture as well.
Jason Monberg | June 5, 2008 07:20 PM
You write "Declarative techniques that use XML structures tend to accelerate the creation of domain-specific languages (DSLs)." What is interesting is that the vitality and fecundity of domain-specific markup languages has not, so far, translated into any vitality of domain-specific support languages. Quite the reverse.
Now I don't doubt that it is possible for such ecosystems to emerge (isn't that what the RDF project is attempting), but since a large portion of the XML value proposition is based on the use of COTS and general-purpose tools, I think they will be the exception rather than the rule.
I have two concrete examples. First, the use of Schematron (which operates direct on the markup) and W3C RuleML (when operating on RDF.) The second is that when the gap between the markup and the data model is great enough (e.g. which people variously consider as ugly markup or elegant model-driven development take your pick) then having some kind of domain-specific support (often just an API rather than a whole language) is a reasonable (but regretable?) approach.
When you start using Google as a development platform you quickly run into limitations. Google was not prepared for the unwashed thousands yet, they have accomodated millions of requests. My travels have encountered almost all of the challenges and a fair share of solutions.
Let us take some time here to thank Michael. THANKS!!! - There now I feel better too. About a year ago this gentleman was writing about the GWT (Google Tookit) and his four part series seems to have surfaced in XRX jargon. I say try it!
The British royal family changed their last name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. Renouncing all German titles and properties while in the midst of a great World War.
Clarification from the web....
On 17 July 1917, King George V issued a Proclamation which stated that the male line descendants of the royal family would bear the surname Windsor:
from the date of this Our Royal Proclamation Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that all the descendants in the male line of Our said Grandmother Queen Victoria who are subjects of these Realms, other than female descendants who may marry or may have married, shall bear the said Name of Windsor A few months later, King George V issued Letters Patent on 30 October 1917 which limited the title 'Prince' and the style 'Royal Highness' to the children of a sovereign, the children of sons of a sovereign and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. HH Prince Alastair of Connaught (1914-1943), grandson of HRH Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught (Queen Victoria's fourth son), became the first member of the royal family to use the surname Windsor in lieu of his princely title. It has been suggested that it was a misinterpretation of these latest Letters Patent which led to HH Prince Alastair (for such he was based on practise going back to the time of King George I's accession in 1714 and which practise was confirmed in Queen Victoria's Letters Patent of 30 January 1864; source: "The Princes of Great Britain" article in Burke's Peerage 1963 edition, pp xxvii-xxxii) being denied his princely title. However, as he was the son and heir of a peeress (Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife), he was allowed the courtesy use of his mother's subsidiary title and became Alastair Windsor, styled Earl of Macduff.
On 11 December 1917, it was further decided by Letters Patent that:
the grandchildren of the sons of any such Sovereign in the direct male line (save only the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales) shall have the style and title enjoyed by the children of Dukes. In 1952, Queen Elizabeth II confirmed her grandfather's decision that the royal family's surname would continue to be Windsor. Her Majesty declared on 9 April 1952 that it was:
her Will and Pleasure that She and Her Children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that Her descendants other than female descendants who marry and their descendants shall bear the name of Windsor. A few years later, HM The Queen modified this statement by issuing Letters Patent in February 1960 which stated in part:
while I and my children will continue to be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, my descendants, other than descendants enjoying the style, title or attributes of Royal Highness and the titular dignity of Prince or Princess, and female descendants who marry and their descendants, shall bear the name Mountbatten-Windsor. Did this mean that the name of some members of the royal family changed from "Windsor" to "Mountbatten-Windsor"? Some people contend that the goal of this declaration was meant to not only change the surname of the children of HM The Queen but those of her male-line descendants as well. At Princess Anne's wedding in November 1974, Anne signed the marriage register 'Anne', without a surname. It was the registrar who filled in her names as 'Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise Mountbatten-Windsor'. According to a Buckingham Palace statement issued in October 1975, the specific addition of the surname 'Mountbatten-Windsor' was "the Queen's decision that this should be done". Further, HM The Queen consulted with the acting Prime Minister to confirm whether all her children would have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. She received the following reply:
"The effect of Your Majesty's Declaration is that all the children of Your Majesty who may at any time need a surname have the surnames of Mountbatten-Windsor." (Prince Philip: A Biography, by Denis Judd, London: Michael John, 1980, page 196) It would seem that the surname of HM The Queen's children is whatever HM wishes. Legally and constitutionally, however, the Queen cannot do as she wishes. The surname of the Queen's children is Mountbatten-Windsor in practise and has appeared three times: at Princess Anne's first marriage in 1974, on Prince Andrew's marriage register in 1986, and when the banns were read prior to Princess Anne's second marriage to Commander Laurence in 1992. (When the Prince of Wales married for the first time in 1981, he signed the register as "Charles P" and the registrar filled in his name as "His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George The Prince of Wales".) Nonetheless, the family name remains legally Windsor because there hasn't been any modification or clarification to the Letters Patent of 1960.
When Great Heart, slays the giant, a pillar is erected and his head is placed upon it. The following was written such that passengers and passers - by might read;
"He that did wear this head was one That pilgrims did misuse; He stopped their way, he spared none, But did them all abuse; Until that I, Great-heart, arose, The pilgrims' guide to be, Until that I did him oppose That was their enemy."
5 messages in net.sourceforge.lists.exist-openRe: XForms and eXist From Sent On Attachments Dan 21 Jan 2008 22:13 Scott Warren 22 Jan 2008 13:40 Andrzej Jan Taramina 22 Jan 2008 15:08 Adam Retter 23 Jan 2008 06:04 Scott Warren 23 Jan 2008 14:51 Subject: Re: XForms and eXist From: Scott Warren (scot...@ocom.com.au) Date: 01/23/2008 02:51:18 PM List: net.sourceforge.lists.exist-open Glad to hear. I had to ask J Still wondering where XRX came from ...
Regards
Scott Warren
From: Adam Retter [mailto:adam...@devon.gov.uk] Sent: Thursday, 24 January 2008 1:05 AM To: Scott Warren Cc: exis...@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: RE: [Exist-open] XForms and eXist
The temporary fragment issue is in hand, although it has been on pause for a few months whilst I moved house and renovated, hope to resume work on it ASAP.
-----Original Message----- From: exis...@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:exis...@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Scott Warren Sent: 22 January 2008 21:40 To: 'Dan'; exis...@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Exist-open] XForms and eXist
Dan,
Did you make up XRX? I like it.
Once eXist fixes it's Temporary fragment issue it would the perfect platforms for such a "stack".
Regards
Scott Warren
Ocom Software
From: exis...@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:exis...@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Dan Sent: Tuesday, 22 January 2008 5:14 PM To: exis...@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Exist-open] XForms and eXist
Whatever system you choose for rendering XForms on the browser, and there are now several options, I believe that the combination of XForms/REST/XQuery (XRX) to be a magical fit. It has allowed me to quickly build complex web applications with deep nesting of XML data without ever having to use JavaScript or shred inserts into multiple tables of an RDBMS.
I don't really know if it was an accident that XRX got to be so powerful (I think not), but I believe it has become the "new stack" for building great web applications. I hope people get a chance to try out building some really complex applications with XForms/REST and eXist and see how the architecture holds up.
Chris Wallace, myself and a few others have been working on some small examples in wikibook format that you can get at the following links:
I want to explore the XRX (XForms, REST, XQuery) architecture, so I've set myself the challenge of implementing a social bookmarking web service modelled on del.icio.us as described in Chapter 7 of Leonard Richardson's and Sam Ruby's "RESTful Web Services", using Orbeon Forms and eXist. This is the first post in a series that will look at how the implementation works, and any problems I run into along the way. In this post, I'll be looking at setting up eXist with some basic data and queries that will support the rest of the application. eXist is an open-source native XML database; you might want something a bit more heavy-weight if you're looking to do this with enterprise-level quantities of content, but eXist has the basic capabilities that you'd expect from an XML database and is more than sufficient for exploring the XRX principles. eXist comes bundled with Orbeon; you can download the latest standalone version but the URLs that I'll be referencing here are all based on the bundled version.
XForms is something of an odd duck. Originally intended simply as a modularization of the HTML components so that they could better work in a more XML oriented environment, the XForms specification very quickly morphed into the foundation for a considerably more sophisticated application, albeit one that had a few ... idiosyncrasies.
For instance, unlike most other applications where the data model was bound into objects and object models, XForms defined its data models as blocks of XML, and the controls, rather than individually holding values that the application could set or retrieve via script, actually were bound to the data model - change a value in the model, and the control changed, change a control value, and the underlying model automatically reflected that change. Throw in bindings using XPath expressions, a purely declarative structure and working with models that could be loaded from the server or submitted to the server without forcing a reload of resources, and you could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that XForms was a language designed by committee (which, to be honest, is pretty much what happened).
W3C Standards are themselves a little odd, with the XML standards being particularly notable for this. In most cases, standards represent a consensus view about what the existing state of the industry looks like, only with the rough edges of controversy smoothed away in smoky, back-room deals (the truism of politics and sausage also applies to the creation of standards - one should never look too closely into how any of them are made). The W3C XML standards, however, involved a technology that itself had not existed until the W3C formally established it, though it did of course have the twenty five year old precedent of SGML to fall back on.
What emerged after XML, on the other hand, has bordered on the surreal. XSLT took a template matching approach to transformations and XML processing that was powerful but hardly intuitive (especially if you tended to be dubious about the power of recursion). XPath provided an odd notation for referencing the various parts of a given XML structure, while the recent completion of XQuery did the same thing for whole collections of XML documents. Even XML domain formats like SVG got into the act, representing a radical break in the depiction of vector graphics that seemed completely at odds with the instruction oriented approach that predated postscript.
All of these technologies (as well as XForms) represented the rethinking of computational tasks in light of a semantically neutral meta-language and a declarative approach to programming. Not surprisingly, the tools that emerged out of this bear remarkably little resemblance to more procedural imperative tools. Similarly, the XML community has always been somewhat smaller and ... well ... quirkier than its imperative counterparts in other languages, so it is perhaps not all that surprising that XForms has gained relatively short shrift compared to AJAX, Ruby or other web technologies.
However, there are a number of signs that XForms is beginning to establish itself as a legitimate tool for businesses and developers:
The XForms specification has gone through both a 1.0 release, which provided the first generation of XForms tools a stable standard on which to build, and a 1.1 working draft that represents some significant rethinking of 1.0 problem spots is now relatively stable and will likely become a formal recommendation this year. XForms implementations exist for Mozilla Firefox as a plugin that's been built in conjunction with the primary build, and this implementation now supports most of the 1.0 specification and several important pieces of the 1.1 specification. Third party support for an Internet Explorer is provided by FormsPlayer. Server-based XForms implementations by Orbeon and Chiba provide ways of hosting XForms on any platform that supports basic AJAX capabilities, with both increasingly appearing as bundled clients with a variety of XML Database servers ... and both boasting a significant customer base. XForms is now appearing as an embedded systems on mobile devices from companies such as PicoForms and Yahoo, and is also appearing as the embedded forms engine for the OpenOffice.org suite. The combination of XForms, REST and XQuery (a collection increasingly known collectively as XRX) is gaining prominence as XQuery itself becomes more widely accepted and more XQuery implementations appear on the market. Finally, as organizations move towards the creation of industry vertical XML taxonomies, the need for sophisticated and versatile tools for rendering this (highly malleable) content is rising. XForms is ideally suited for these types of applications. All of these factors indicate that XForms as a technology is beginning to become competitive, especially for those applications dealing with large, complex data structures. However, while this may show the viability of such applications, it doesn't necessarily indicate why XForms as a technology should be interesting to you or your organization. To better understand that, it's worth appreciating that a radical shift has been taking place quietly in the web application space for some time, a shift best embodied by the acronym MVC: Model/View/Controller.
Models have been at the heart of application development for some time, but typically the models involved are conceptual in nature, and tend to revolve primarily around the objects that are interact within the application and their correlated processes.
For instance, consider the typical insurance application, which in most cases actually tends to be a number of related applications. One part of this application is the sale of insurance policies, each of which usually has a number of potential sub-parts with fairly significant data acquisition requirements per policy or sub-policy. A second part of the application is the submission of a claim against such a policy, where a number of different people interact with the system: an agent records the initial claims from a customer (often going from screen to screen to handle whether the claim is against a small vehicle, a large vehicle, a house, or some other insured entity), a claims adjuster who compares the initial claim against the actual damages found, and consequently makes annotations or changes content and makes recommendations, and a claims manager, who either approves or disproves the claim, typically on the basis of external conditions, legal precedent and customer prior history. All of these people may in fact be utilizing the same basic record, but what they do with it differs dramatically; not surprisingly, such applications, for all that they may seem perfect for use on the web, often tend to be based on standalone apps because the complexities of setting up a website to manage this is just more work than its worth.
As it turns out, however, all of the actors above are in fact working on the same basic data model that in turn can be broken down into a few (fairly complex) collections of entities - a collection of policies, a collection of claims, and a collection or rules for determining if the claims will be paid out (there are also a couple of additional actor collections which determine permission action for various users, but the role that these play is comparatively minor and can be filled in as appropriate). Thus, in terms of a model, the primary objects defined in this case are policies, claims, and rules.
One of the central concepts of data modeling is that what you are attempting with a model to determine the minimal necessary set of data that needs to be maintained in order for an application to work. The configuration of this data can be called the state of the model at any given point in time, or an instance of the model. In the XML space, this condition can be restated by saying that a given model can be expressed as a set of XML structures, each of which holds some critical aspect of a model (for computational sake, there are times that it is easier to decompose certain portions of a model as separate XML instances than it is to maintain all of the state in a central document).
One implication of this, however, is that if the instances do in fact accurately represent the state of the model at any given time, then it is possible to conceive of a layer (called a controller) that can map the model to some distinct presentation or view. One such view may show a report providing the details of the claim in a read-only fashion. Another view may provide an editor that lets you make changes to the model (and that render changes in the model as some change in the user interface). If you indicate that a claim is being made for a boat, for instance, then only those parts of the claim editor that deal with marine vehicles are deemed relevant and displayed, while those dealing with houses or cars are hidden from the user.
In this example, relevancy is a significant aspect of a model that can be incorporated as a specific property in the model through the use of some form of constraint ... which is in fact exactly what the controller is supposed to control. Thus the role of the controller is to mediate constraints on the model, while the role of the view is to provide an interface between the model and the producer or consumer of instances of that model.
The Model/View/Controller (MVC) paradigm has been around for quite some time, but in general has been found more in the breech than in the observation. Most contemporary applications work upon a component basis where each component maintains its own (largely inaccessible) model, and any attempt to build a more cohesive large-scale model from this usually involved pushing the model into abstraction. The difficulty with abstract models is that they are extremely hard to enforce, especially when the controller portions are defined weakly if at all.
However, for a number of reasons, XML based web applications lend themselves strongly to MVC type applications. XML, by its very nature, makes it possible to establish a virtual object model without having to specifically the precise implementation of each subordinate object in the model. It is property based, rather than process based; this makes it easy to separate out the concerns between model and controller. XML has no intrinsic semantics (nor even an explicit requirement upon schema), meaning that it becomes the right and privilege of the application designer to determine the bindings on a given element in the model, not the framework's. Finally, because XML can be readily streamed over network connections, you can create complex distributed models at comparatively little impact (and in most cases, no impact) to the functioning of the application.
This is precisely what XForms does. XForms is an XML namespace layer that is meant to be bound into other namespaces - XHTML, SVG, Open Office, DocBook or DITA, proprietary namespaces, it really doesn't matter. An XForms application thus usually defines a model with one or more instances in it that hold sway within the scope of the particular page, graphic, or related context, all defined by the use of either local XML documents or imported XML streams. The application in question may also define constraints within that model called bindings that determine the relevancy, validity, value, or accessibility (read/write state) of given nodes within that model).
Once these are defined, the view defined by the XForms application in turn consists of various input (and output) components, each of which links via XPath to one or more nodes in the model. Sometimes these linkages are simple - a given selection box could be linked to the type of claim (auto, house, marine, etc.), such that by changing the value in that box you also change the type of claim. Other linkages are more complex - a repeat element will link to a set of elements which represents all boats that are covered by the claim, where the individual properties of each boat represent simple links. Perhaps most important, if a constraint in the model forces a change in the type of claim, then the select box will automatically (without user input) also change its value to represent this new state.
Put another way, these controls are bound to the model, which is bound to the control. The user seldom if ever needs to write any imperative code to accomplish these changes. More significantly, while the data model instance can be changed to reflect the changes introduced from this view, at any given time, the model itself is internally consistent. Indeed, it is even possible within XForms to keep an application from submitting an XForms model to a server (or persisting it locally) if the model instance in question doesn't have all of the right information (such as someone making a claim without adding the specific thing claimed damaged or stolen).
This kind of design approach has some huge implications:
Especially by controlling relevance, you can replace a large number of "screens" in a traditional server-based application with a single XHTML+XForms document that shows only the parts of the user interface that are relevant at any given time in the entry process. You can prevent model instances with incomplete state from being persisted to the server, or you could use an XForms interface to clearly differentiate between draft documents which aren't valid and processed documents that are. A given XHTML+XForms document can be broken down into distinct sub-pieces that are then compiled together as a single document when needed. This means that it becomes far easier to change portions of a document without having to replace the entire application. You can utilize XForms implementations in most browsers, so that changing your applications generally does not require extensive downloads and upgrades of the XForms-based application. XForms based applications work especially well in queued message environments: multiple agents can send new claims to the server where they are submitted in a message queue and can consequently be processed independent of the agent's own editing processes. Submissions that require clarification or are otherwise provisional rejected for re-editing would then be sent back to the user via notification systems (such as atom feeds). In most XForms implementations, it is possible to customize the look and feel of a given control, sometimes dramatically. For instance, in the insurance claim for an auto collision, it may be possible to define different types of collision intersections as graphics, then record the path of both vehicles as a set of lines from a graphic drawing interface that gets translated into a set of coordinates in a given field. The underlying XForms model and controller remains simple, but the components in the view can be made as sophisticated as necessary. The principle drawbacks that XForms has at this stage are generally those that any fairly new technology has, and as such need to be considered in that light when evaluating XForms. Specifically,
the developer community is small, albeit is growing at a fairly dramatic pace. This will likely continue as a number of XForms pilot projects in various industries come to fruition, and the demand for XForms developers continues to gain steam, because of the close (and obvious) coupling between XForms and XQuery, as more systems implement robust XQuery based systems, the architectures for supporting XForms on the server will also increase. XQuery implementations have risen dramatically in the last year after the publication of the W3C XQuery recommendation (significantly, this same coupling also has meant that every XQuery developer has in turn either also also become or worked in conjunction with an XForms developer), in general, the XForms technologies are currently produced by tier 2 or tier 3 companies, or exist as open source projects of the same magnitude. Given the synergies between XQuery and XForms, it is likely that many of these companies or projects will be absorbed by one or more tier 1 companies over time, XForms 1.0 has some issues that have limited the complexity of the applications built against it. XForms 1.1, now in Candidate Recommendation status, resolves most of these issues, while still remaining backwards compatible with 1.0, and it will likely become a full Recommendation by June 2008. Discussions for an XForms 2.0, which incorporates many of the innovations brought with XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0, are currently underway, and will likely convene as a full working group upon publication of 1.1. What this means is that the technology has both reached a point of stability and has developed a set of complementary technologies that are also stable enough to make XForms a good tool for exploration via pilot projects. It is debatable whether the technology is stable enough for the full deployment of enterprise applications at the moment, though the trends indicate that this will be case by the end of 2008 or mid-2009 at the outside.
XForms represents one area where Burton Group recognizes the potential for significant growth in both market presence and technological adoption. It is no panacea (though few technologies are, even those that may be advertised as such) but especially in increasingly sophisticated XML data applications it is a logical, compelling, and attractive alternative to complex applications that become bogged down because of server application complexity.
XRX: Simple, Elegant, Disruptive - O'Reilly XML Blog
Mr. Vaibhav V. Gadge (vaigadge@in.ibm.com), Software Engineer, IBM
25 Jul 2006
Web applications are ready to go to the next level, and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) can greatly enhance user interaction. In this overview of RIAs, you'll learn how to adapt them in the user interface (UI) layer. Web developers and architects might be particularly interested in the discussion of Laszlo, XUL, XForms, Macromedia Flex, and Dojo -- the common technologies currently available in this area. Links to other technologies are also included. A fair understanding of traditional UI tools, such as HTML and XML, is assumed.
Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) go beyond the standard limited set of conventional user interface (UI) controls provided by HTML, such as text boxes, checkboxes, or radio buttons. RIAs provide users with a much richer set of controls, and a more sophisticated server interaction mechanism. With RIAs, users don't have to refresh the page when they submit data from a browser; they can refresh only a part of page, have better error handling, and a lot more.
This article covers:
Overview of RIAs
UI technologies, including Laszlo, XUL, XForms, Dojo, and Macromedia Flex
Comparison of tools
Other technologies
Overview of RIAs
The term "Rich Internet Application" has been around for a few years, although the concept has also been known as:
Remote scripting
X Internet
Rich (Web) clients
Rich Web application
The Internet is a huge source of information, and technologies strive to improve information delivery and storage performance on the Web in a sophisticated and user-friendly manner. In most Web applications, a substantial amount of processing takes place on the server side and mere user interaction takes place on the client side. This eventually burdens the server with a heavy data and processing load, and increased dependency on network traffic.
The ancient client-server based architecture has high flexibility and richness, but died in the age of the Web. One reason was the lack of uniformity or standardization of client applications. Now, undoubtedly, the browser is the universally accepted Web tool. Yet, it lacks intelligent processing. So the onus lies on client applications that can deliver a richer user experience and do simple processing on the client side. RIAs provide opportunities to design much better, faster, more engaging, and infinitely more usable user experiences -- all within a browser.
Developers who work on the Web and internet UI layer often experiment on the UI layer and try various RIA tools that can work effectively with minimum external support. In most cases, however, the browser needs some support in terms of plug-ins, extensions, or downloads to work seamlessly inside the browser.
This article discusses the tools and parameters that help identify the best RIA choices for a business case. It isn't possible to discuss all the factors of RIAs, but I'll concentrate on some important features to review as you evaluate RIA technologies.
What to evaluate
When you evaluate RIA technologies, consider the following factors:
Richness of the UI
How many basic, out-of-the-box UI widgets or controls are readily available to develop a UI? How can you do data binding and event binding with these controls? The new controls should be easy to use, and also easily pluggable. Some RIA technologies give simple ways to add richness and more informative visual experiences, such as providing animation APIs in the page. For example, to ensure users click only once on a button, you can animate the button to move out of the view.
Complexity
Developers have used existing page-based models for so many years because it is easy and simple, however clumsy it might appear. RIA technology has to be easy to learn, build, and extend. It should also interoperate with existing Web technologies.
Flexibility and componentization
Flexibility to collaborate with different middleware components is important. Collaboration should be easily composable and extendable to create new customized widgets. Once you create libraries of custom widgets, you can reuse them in applications.
Refreshing the page
There is a significant advantage to refreshing a block of a page instead of an entire page, as it directly depends on network traffic. Refreshing a block makes the application faster, more usable, and a much better visual experience for users. It also helps manage errors better.
Suppose a user performs an action or a first task on a Web page, and the data is submitted to a server in the background. Then the user resumes another task on the same page. In the meantime, the feedback from the first task has come back and updated some part of the same page. Thus, if you design the Web page in such a way, you make the work and tasks more efficient.
Security
When you adapt to RIAs, ensure that there is no increased security threat compared to conventional applications. Be aware of security surrounding server communications, or browser plug-ins and extensions downloaded on a client.
Support for basic Web paradigms
The technology should support the basic Web paradigms that have evolved in today's Web applications, such as internationalization, user device independence, browser independence, and binary file transfer support for upload and download functions. Even the maturity of the technology matters.
Tooling
Review the tooling that's available for developers in the form of integrated development environments (IDE), with unit testing and debugging support. Tooling might be plug-ins with existing editors or supported editors.
Usability
Users expect the browser application to work with its usual browser features. In particular, features such as saving images, Ctrl+F to search for content on a page, and copy-and-paste don't work in Flash-based solutions. Base your RIA usability design on human-computer interaction (HCI) principles.
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UI technologies
This section discusses some different options provided by current UI technologies.
Laszlo
Laszlo is the leading open source platform for the development and delivery of RIAs on the Web using Flash. Flash player was initially started with a small plug-in to run Flash files inside browsers. Because of its high reliability and compatibility, it is extensively used for creating flashy and animated images. Later versions have incorporated some serious scripting compatibility, data exchange with servers, and Flash 6 that adds bidirectional audio and video communications.
Laszlo has extended this richness, and used scripting language that generates Flash and delivers in a browser. It provides an open source XML-native platform for building RIAs.
What is XPath?
XML Path Language is a W3C-recommended language designed to address the information in an XML document. XPath's primary purpose is to navigate through any node and attributes in XML documents.
It needs only Flash 5.x+ installed on any browser. The script is written in an XML-based language called LZX. LZX is an object oriented, tag-based language that uses XML and JavaScript syntax to create the dynamically generated Flash files. The LZX compiler on a server compiles an LZX file and sends out Flash files to the browser. The actual data exchange is in XML form, and LZX controls use XPath to refer to XML. Events are also easy to bind with the controls. Each control defines a set of events that can inherit events from the parent. The example in Listing 1 shows how to use an event.
Listing 1. Example, simplelaszlo.lzx
You'll find Laszlo easy to learn, develop new components, componentize, and integrate with any Web application. It has a rich library of components compared to other RIA tools.
LZX has the capability to make HTTP and Web services requests with SOAP and RPC protocols to the server, in the background, without refreshing the page. A plug-in is already present to integrate any Web application file with the Laszlo library. Currently, an Eclipse-based IDE is available for development. There is also some tooling available for debugging in LZX on the client side. Interestingly, they also provide the Lzunit framework for testing Laszlo applications.
Recently, Laszlo announced support to deliver the application in a browser as a DHTML using the same existing framework. This provides you the option to configure whether you want to deliver the application to DHTML or Flash. Laszlo has also extended support to the Ajax community and multiple user device delivery.
Figure 1 shows an example of Laszlo and Dojo.
Figure 1. RIA image created with Laszlo and Dojo
XUL
XML user-interface language (XUL) is Mozilla's XML-based, cross-platform language that describes user interfaces of applications. It provides a rich library of ready-made components for use in a page. Currently, it works only on Gecko-based browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, or Netscape 6 or later.
XUL uses an XML-based markup language to describe the user interfaces controls. It provides all sorts of popular rich internet controls such as menus, tabs, trees, and pop-up menus. XUL uses a document object model (DOM) to store the tree of nodes. Once all XUL files are loaded, XUL parses and converts all tags in a hierarchical document structure of nodes. You can then use the DOM structure to examine and modify the data using its own method and additional methods provided by XUL functions. You can always access and manipulate DOM from JavaScript, making it easy to handle it like a typical HTML control. Each control and each node have several attributes that define their appearance and structure.
A browser handles XUL files similarly to HTML or other browser content when accessed from a remote location. However, when they are installed locally in a browser in its chrome system as an extension, they receive special privileges to access local systems and bookmarks. In this case, it can perform additional privileged operations.
The Mozilla browser itself is also a set of packages containing XUL files, JavaScript, and stylesheets, although it is a much larger and much sophisticated extension.
XUL uses the eXtensible Bindings Language (XBL) for binding. Each control can be bound using Mozilla's XBL. XUL uses the RDF format, which can be used to store resources. You can use data in other formats and create RDF data from it, which will be bound to XUL elements.
Because XUL is like an XML file, you can use any text editor or XML editor for the IDE. Since the same underlying code handles all the XUL files, HTML, and SVG, you can use CSS properties to style XUL files. It has built-in support for localization, as all text content is kept separately in a browser.
Skins, made up of CSS files in Mozilla, define the user interface of the browser. You can modify and create skins for different looks without changing the code. It is similar to extending the power of the browser APIs by adding features.
If you run the file in Listing 2 in Mozilla Firefox, it will render a text box and button.
XForms
XForms 1.0 provides a new platform-independent markup language for online interaction. W3C has come up with the specification for implementing XForms, and it is considered a successor to HTML forms.
XForms is independent of the presentation device. It can be delivered without any code changes to a traditional browser, PDA mobile phone, voice browser, and even some more exotic emerging clients such as an instant messenger. This makes it an attractive tool for RIA.
In XForms, the actual data (XML form definition) is separated from the presentation of the form. This device-independent XML form definition, called the XForms model, can work with a variety of standard or proprietary user interfaces.
XForms user interfaces provide a standard set of visual controls that are targeted toward replacing today's XHTML form controls. They are usable inside XHTML SVG or other groups, voice browser groups, or can also independently develop user interface components for XForms.The XForms model is referred in each XForms control to render the data. It follows the XPath to refer the elements in XML. When data is submitted, it can just submit the populated XML data model.
XML events
XML events is an XML language with the ability to uniformly integrate event listeners and associated event handlers with a DOM event. When an event occurs, it's dispatched to the element (target) through a document tree path and can be passed back to the tree again. The observer can respond to the event in the path.
XForms uses XML events for handling events and actions. The XML event specifies event, observer, and handler. As shown in Listing 3, DOMActivate is the event, message element is the handler, and parent trigger is the observer.
You can integrate XForms with AJAX. Currently, at the W3C, you can find 20 or more example implementations of XForms. Many vendors, including IBM, have already developed XForms engines (see Resources for the XML Forms Package). Mozilla has announced that XForms will be supported on all platforms on which Mozilla runs. To look at a good example of XForms implementation, see Resources.
Listing 3 shows a simple example of XForms that displays a text box and button rendered with a FormFaces™ implementation.
Listing 3. XForm displaying a text box and button rendered with a FormFaces™ implementation
Dojo
Dojo is an open source DHTML toolkit written in JavaScript. The Dojo Toolkit provides a core set of libraries, and rich set of different package libraries, and each one provides specific functions. Dojo provides lower level APIs to write portable JavaScript and simplify complex scripts. It is easy and quick to prototype interactive widgets and animated transitions. It provides libraries for events system, I/O packages, and generic language enhancement. You can write scripts with Dojo, and can include as little or as much of the available APIs as you want to suit your needs.
Dojo also provides a set of widget libraries that you can use directly in any application. You can use some of the core widgets as UI controls, such as the menu widget, tabs set, tree widget, and more. Others are generic functions, such as layout widgets, date picker, SVG widget, and so on.
Dojo is built around a single markup language that provides a simple way to declare and use response DHTML interface components. Listing 4 shows a simple example of a Dojo component for a special button to the user in an HTML page.
Listing 4. Example, dojosample.html
You need to include the Dojo widgets library that is required in your HTML page.
The Dojo kit also includes some debugging options. The AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) can be used as a powerful IDE. This is part of IBM's Emerging technology Toolkit (ETTK), which is a special collection of emerging techniques. ATF is based largely on the Eclipse Web tools project, which enables support for DOM browsing, JavaScript debugging, and more.
Recently, the Dojo Foundation announced a partnership agreement with Laszlo. Under this agreement, you can use the Dojo Toolkit in Laszlo's open source projects. In turn, Laszlo will contribute libraries to the Dojo Foundation, thereby advancing the growing open source communities at large.
Macromedia Flex
Macromedia Flex is another Flash-based user interface. It provides a Flex presentation server that sits on top of an application server, and generates Flash files dynamically from the server and delivers to a browser. These Flash files are executed inside the Flash player of the browser, and allow interaction with users, the performing of operations, and even the generation of SOAP, HTTP, or AMF requests to connect back to the server.
The layout and UI components are defined in an XML-based language called MXML. Flex provides a rich MXML extensive class library for visual components, containers, and remote service objects and data models. It also does data binding with controls, and accesses server-side data.
An ECMA scripting language (ActionScript 2) is embedded in MXML to handle user events, system events, or to construct complex data models. This is an object-oriented language, similar to JavaScript and ECME script. Like XForms, Flex also keeps data model, data presentation, data validators, and data services separate (similar to the MVC style).
All requests that come to MXML are processed through the Flex compiler, which compiles MXML and generates SWF, and caches until it is modified and finally delivered to the browser.
Any XML editor can be used for scripting of MXML, but Macromedia also provides a special IDE called Flex Builder 1.5 for Flex application development. It has the advantage that it is integrated with the Flex server. It also provides components that allow connecting to the server, doing normal HTTP calls, connecting to remote Java™ objects, and interacting with Web services from the browser itself. It can be integrated with existing J2EE and .NET application models.
Listing 5 shows an example of Macromedia Flex code.
Macromedia Flex looks similar to Laszlo. Both are rich and powerful Flash-based applications. Laszlo stands outside of the Flash engine, so performance might take a hit, but it has several other advantages.
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Comparison of tools
The following table compares the five technologies discussed in the previous section, as well as Altiolive (a rich enterprise application).
Table 1. Comparison of tools
Technologies Browser technology Scripting Richness Notable
Laszlo Flash,XML LZX files+JavaScript High Easy to learn, rich
Mozilla XUL XUL language XUL files+JavaScript High Powerful with browser dependency
XForms Xform Depends on implementation Up to certain extent Device-neutral and W3C compliant
Dojo JavaScript HTML+JavaScript Up to certain extent JavaScript based. Growing and adaptable.
Macromedia Flex Flash, XML MXML files High Not open source. Proprietary tool of Macromedia.
Altiolive Applet, XML Java Up to certain extent http://www.altio.com/
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Other technologies
You've looked at five technologies, but there are certainly more. A number of companies provide very impressive prototypes of RIAs using various technologies. While out of the scope of this article to discuss each of them, it is worth your looking into the following:
Backbase - Develops and sells software that helps create AJAX applications.
Netvibes - A free service for custom-made Web home page solutions.
Zimbra - An open source server and client technology for next-generation enterprise messaging and collaboration.
Protopage - Free, personal start pages.
Nexaweb - A software platform for building and deploying Enterprise Internet Applications.
altio - Rich enterprise applications in a browser.
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In conclusion
This article introduced RIAs, discussed current UI technologies, and pointed to additional technologies. I hope this comparison of the tools will help you choose the one right for your requirements. Each technology has different advantages, giving developers a rich set of controls based on your needs.
The technologies discussed bring some amazing things to users, and provide a richer user experience. You can now go beyond the browser and render to PDAs, mobile devices across platforms, and empower the user experience with audio, video, graphics, and animation. RIAs have almost embraced XML, and XML is undoubtedly the winner here.
In the future, I expect RIAs will play a major role in transforming Web UIs to the next level, and aid preparation to support Web 2.0.
Resources
Learn
OpenLaszlo: Learn all about this open source platform.
XULPlanet: See how easily you can create rich, sophisticated, cross-platform Web applications.
XForms: Visit the W3 place for XForms and the latest implementations.
Macromedia Flex: Look at sample applications at Adobe's Flex Development Center.
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Vaibhav V. Gadge is a software engineer at the IBM Software Lab in Bangalore, India. He currently works on the Portal team of the Websphere Product Center. He is a Java certified professional, and has around five years of technical experience in Java, J2EE, and Web-based technologies on multiple platforms. He holds a Bachelor's degree of Electronics Engineering from Nagpur University. You can reach Vaibhav at vaigadge@in.ibm.com.
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In case you are not familiar with the term TLA, CPG is short for Chairman's Planning Guide in that quaint Three Letter Acronym (TLA) language. This was the vehicle used with the Colorado Jaycee's some 30 years ago to propose some of the 'most fun ever' projects that made friends all over the country for the Colorado, Arvada and Golden JC chapters. Let's start with.... PRIMARY PURPOSE To promote the Minnesota State Fair, Norwegian family heritage, WCCO radio, Minnesota State Fair appetites and scores of needy charities preparing food at the Fair grounds. PRIMARY PARTICIPANTS JoeNovell and John Holmgren's family members. 480-229-4768 eMail: joenovell@gmail.com Calumet Indian Dancers. Boy Scouts of America. St. Paul YMCA Minneapolis YMCA St. Paul Dispatch, Minneapolis Star and Tribune. The International Order of the Moose.
WCCO Radio and TV DeMoley and Jobs Daughters chapters. Norwegian Americans in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Californians Minnesota State Fair Attendees. Scores of Sponsors contributing "The Best 50lb. Flour Bag", "The Biggest Potatoe Sack", "The BEST Sugar", "Butter" and other trinkets of laudable prestege. PRIMARY PLAN
The preparation of the flat bread called 'Lefse' will be sold to every guest of the 10 day fair for a very modest price. Contests willl be conducted daily for the "Best" Lefse story for each day of the Fair.
A Minnesota company that manufactures a Lefse Grill will be promoted to increase volume production of Lefse and enhance contribution dollars by a generous wholesale price of the above mentioned Grill unit.
Other sponsors will be selected for potatoes, flour, sugar, butter and milk and other supplies used in the performance of this project.
WCCO will supply operation headquarters and perhaps help communicate this projects best wishes to all participants and forever regress the 'Tom Thumb' metrics from the Minnesota State Fair record book with a Norwegian favorite recipe only produced in great numbers at the Fair facility.
A tent will be set up at the WCCO end of the park in front of the Grand Stand to house supplies and activities. Potatoe Sacks will be stacked in a sepentine line in fron of the tent and an array of Lefse Grills will crank out 'rounds' of Lefse, 24X7 over the 10 day Fair.
Odin will be moved by the Potatoe's sacrificed in his name and bless all that attend and support this project!
EDITORS NOTE:[an evaluation open for possible inclusion in the Iowa State Fair date{s}?]
When I was a kid growing up on our small dairy farm in Wisconsin that had been homesteaded by Norwegian immigrants in the late 1800s, I figured everyone knew how to make lefse. After all, everyone I knew could make lefse, so didn't that mean everyone else could make it too?
That was forty years ago.
Now I know better.
In the rural area where I live, however, at least a few people still do know how to make lefse. And at Christmas, you can even buy lefse in some of the grocery stores around here.
Several years ago, a girl from Norway was a foreign exchange student at the local high school. When she found out some people in Wisconsin still make lefse and that we consider it a delicious delicacy, she expressed amazement. "I can't believe you make that yet. We don't do it anymore in Norway," she said.
'What?' I thought. 'No lefse?! What's the matter with those Norwegians?'
During the latter part of the 1800s, 30,000 Norwegians immigrated to Wisconsin. Today, nearly a half million people are their descendants out of a total population of 5.5 million. In other words, almost 10 percent of Wisconsin residents are of Norwegian descent.
Expert lefse makers use a lefse griddle (a large, round electric griddle that heats up to 500 degrees), a grooved lefse rolling pin, and flat wooden lefse turners. But you don't have to buy special equipment to make lefse. You can use ordinary kitchen utensils: an electric fry pan (that heats up to 400 or 450 degrees Fahrenheit), a rolling pin, a pancake turner, and a large mixing bowl. You will also need potatoes, butter or margarine, a little sugar, some milk, and flour.
Rolling lefse is a skill that requires plenty of patience and lots of practice. Expert lefse makers produce pieces that are as large as the top of a snare drum and practically thin enough to read a newspaper through. My lefse, which turns out just like my mother's did, is about the size of a dinner plate and somewhat thicker.
Lefse experts recommend ricing the cooked potatoes, but my mother always mashed the potatoes. Refrigerating the mashed or riced potatoes overnight makes the lefse easier to roll out.
When you're ready to start making lefse, take the potatoes out of the refrigerator and mash or rice them again. I have one of those crisscross patterned potato mashers, and it works well for taking the lumps out of the mashed potatoes. Lefse rolls out easier if the dough is cold, so make sure the potatoes are cold when you start. You may also want to refrigerate the dough for a while after you mix it. I have noticed that when I reach the end of the batch and the dough is starting to warm up, the lefse is harder to roll out.
Making a batch of lefse from this recipe takes about one and a half hours and will yield approximately two dozen pieces, depending upon how much dough you use for each one.
Here's my mother's lefse recipe from the book Christmas In Dairyland.
Lefse
- 4 heaping cups of mashed or riced potatoes - 1 stick of butter (or margarine) - 1/3 cup of milk - 1 teaspoon of sugar - 1 teaspoon of salt - 2 cups of flour - extra flour for rolling out the dough.
Measure out the mashed/riced potatoes into a large mixing bowl. In a medium-sized saucepan, melt the butter/margarine in the milk; stir in the sugar and salt. Then pour over the cold mashed (riced) potatoes and mix.
Stir two cups of flour into the potato mixture. The dough will be sticky and soft.
Start heating the griddle or electric frying pan. Do not add any oil, margarine or shortening. Lefse is baked on a dry surface.
Take a lump of dough about the size of an egg. Place a heaping teaspoon of flour on the surface where you're going to roll out your lefse. Work about half of the heaping teaspoon of flour into the lump of dough (enough so you can handle the dough, but not so much that the dough becomes dry).
Starting in the center, roll outward until the lefse is about the size of a dinner plate. Try not to roll the lefse so thin that you cannot pick it up. If the lefse tears when you start to pick it up, gather it into a lump and roll it out again. Don't do this too many times, though, or your lefse will end up tough and dry. Ideally, you should only roll the lefse once, although that's probably not a realistic expectation if you've never made lefse before. Also try to turn the lefse only once while you are rolling it out. If the lefse starts to stick, add a little more flour.
When you have the lefse rolled out, transfer it to the hot griddle. Carefully pick it up and quickly move it. If you move slowly, the lefse is more likely to tear. Expert lefse makers use flat lefse turners (they look like long flat sticks) to transfer the dough by rolling it onto the turner and then unrolling it onto the griddle. You can also try rolling your lefse onto the rolling pin and transferring it to the griddle or the fry pan.
Once you have the lefse on the griddle, bake it for about a minute, just until brown 'freckles' start to appear; then turn the lefse over and let the other side bake just until brown freckles start to appear. While the first piece of lefse is baking, roll out your second one.
After the first piece of lefse is done, use the pancake turner to remove it from the griddle and place it on a clean dishtowel. Cover with another dishtowel.
Bake the second lefse and roll out the third piece.
When the second lefse is finished, place it on top of the first one and cover with the towel again.
Then bake the third piece.
Repeat until you have baked all of the dough. Place each newly baked lefse on top of the previously baked lefse and cover the stack with the towel.
Once the lefse is completely cool, place it in a plastic bag or wrap it with plastic wrap or aluminum foil to help keep it moist. You must wait until the lefse is completely cool before wrapping it, otherwise the heat from the lefse will condense inside of the plastic or the aluminum foil, and your lefse will end up soggy. If you leave the lefse overnight without wrapping it in plastic or aluminum foil, it will probably be dried out in the morning. If the lefse dries out, sprinkle a little water on the dishtowel and wrap the dishtowel and the lefse in plastic. The lefse will soften up again.
When you're ready to eat a piece of lefse, spread it with butter (or margarine), sprinkle sugar on it (some people also like to sprinkle cinnamon on their lefse), and roll into a log.
Also, once the lefse is cool, it can be frozen.
This recipe is from the book Christmas In Dairyland by LeAnn R. Ralph.
Logic designer and internet administrator. John is the kind of technical person that will spend 12 hours on a challenge so that the next time it is encountered only 12 micro seconds are required for the proven solution.
"Marblehead CG-7" is an action adventure novel about Lt. Bliss, the Navy, Radio, "The Three Friends", Baseball and Cuba in the 1890's.
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