Living documents with XML events (1/4) - exploring XML | 2

Living documents with XML events

Naming Event Types

This specification does not specify how language designers should name events (i.e., the values used in the event attribute).

To identify event types from other namespaces, qualified names, as defined by XML schema, should be used, e.g.:

<listener event="smil:repeatEvent" observer="mm1" handler="synch1"/> 
<img src="button.gif" alt="ok" ev:event="ev:activate" handler="#act"/>

A number of event types are defined in the DOM level 2 specification, to which you should refer for their semantics.

Those events types, and the names you should use to refer to them are:

User interface events:

focusIn, focusOut, activate

Mouse events:

click, mousedown, mouseup, mouseover, mousemove, mouseout

Key events:

(none)

Mutation events:

subtreeModified, nodeInserted, nodeRemoved, nodeRemovedFromDocument, nodeInsertedIntoDocument, attrModified, characterDataModified

HTML events:

load, unload, abort, error, select, change, submit, reset, focus, blur, resize, scroll

All these event types are in the XML Events namespace.

Conclusion

Declaration and handling of events is of wide importance to many XML initiatives. Having it tackled at the generic level might prevent different reinventions in various XML vocabularies. It is quite surprising to see that this topic is addressed relatively late in the development of XML standards, hopefully not too late.

Produced by Michael Claßen

URL: https://www.webreference.com/xml/column43/4.html
Created: Nov 12, 2001
Revised: Nov 12, 2001