Is XForms still a live standard?

Question

The XForms standard page seemed to indicate that it was no longer live, and that html5 kinda sorta does the job now. Is this the case? I'm looking at storing heterogenous data nuggets as XML fragments - generating a editor page according to the datatype.

Answer 1

To add to Phil's answer:

The XForms Working Group at W3C is active and currently working on XForms 2.0. See in particular the proposed 2.0 features on the wiki and the in-progress draft of the spec as of Feburary, 2012.

Also I don't think it's fair to say that HTML 5 "does the job". HTML 5 forms bring small and welcome improvements over HTML 4 forms, but they don't bridge the gap with XForms.

XForms on the other hand provides:

• MVC architecture
• XML data model (you like it or you don't, of course)
• a powerful repeat model with xf:repeat
• declarative properties and calculations
• declarative event handlers
• integration between the data model and REST services with xf:submission
• built-in notion of hint, help, and alert messages

And I am probably missing some.

UPDATE 2016-11-28: For an answer up to date as of the end of 2016, please see this newer question.

Answer 2

The standard definitely isn't dead, although it's perhaps true to say that it hasn't gained much traction within the standard web-browsing ecosystem.

I have worked on a number of projects where XForms has been used as the forms layer in some bespoke application; in my cases the XForms parts have been handled by either Backplane BX or Ubiquity XForms, both of which may be worth taking a look at depending on your requirements (full disclosure: I've worked in the past as an implementer on both projects). Backplane BX is Windows/IE specific; Ubiquity XForms is a cross-browser, client-side javascript library; both are open source.

There are also a number of other libraries that I've not worked with but which I've heard good things about: Orbeon and XSLTForms spring to mind, but a more complete, albeit slightly outdated, list can be found here.