Form Builder is all about enabling form authors to create forms with a web-based tool, without having to write code. But then, in what format are the forms you create with Form Builder saved? Is it similar to when editing a document in Word, where your document is saved in a mostly opaque “Word format”? It isn’t: you forms are saved in XForms[1].
Using a standard[2], human readable, easily transformable format has lots of benefits. And we want to enable those of you who wish to do so, to go one level deeper: to be able to view and edit the XForms, directly in Form Builder. And this is why, the Form Builder code editor in the upcoming Form Builder 4.0[3] has been improved to do syntax highlighting, help with code indentation, highlight syntax errors, and more. We do all of this by leveraging the excellent CodeMirror component.
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Or, to be more precise, forms are saved as XML in XForms+HTML+Form Runner, where the latter is used for higher level constructs that have no equivalent in HTML or XForms, such as section or grid. ↩
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Modulo the Form Runner tags, which are specific to Orbeon Forms. ↩
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At the time of this writing, Orbeon Forms 4.0 hasn’t been released yet, but you can already experiment with Orbeon Forms 4.0, including the updated source code editor, by using a 4.0 milestone build. ↩
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