Designing electronic forms

摘要

A system and method enabling a designer to build electronic forms from hierarchical data is described. Displays of hierarchical data, facilitation of selection of a portion of the hierarchical data, and displays of one or more transformation-language components associated with a selected portion of hierarchical data are described. From the transformation-language components selected by a designer, generation of an electronic form is also described.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
displaying a visual representation of hierarchical data in a first area of a screen, the hierarchical data displayed in a tree arrangement of XML data having portions represented by nodes in the tree arrangement; receiving input selecting a node of the hierarchical data; identifying a reduced set of transformation-language components that are associated with the selected node of hierarchical data based on a structure of the selected node of hierarchical data, the reduced set of transformation-language components identified from a full set of available transformation language components, the full set of available transformation language components including at least one more transformation language component than the reduced set of transformation language components; displaying the reduced set of transformation-language components in a component display area, the displayed reduced set of transformation-language components including at least two of a text box, a drop-down list box, a list box, an option button, or a check box; receiving input selecting one of the reduced set of transformation-language components that is associated with the selected node of hierarchical data to place the selected transformation-language component on a second area of the screen; and rendering the selected transformation-language component on the second area of the screen, the rendering comprising creating a rendering-language document to aid in rendering the selected transformation-language component on the second area of the screen and annotating the rendering-language document to include a reference to the selected transformation-language component; and generating a transformation-language document using the annotated rendering-language document.