Have you considered Infopath? It is designed having non-technical users in 
mind.

Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev


"KW" <kevinw@a...> wrote in message 
news:1168013070.157905.171970@1......
> Thanks Dimitre. I appreciate your help.
>
> To continue on this topic, do you think this is a good approach (mixing
> the html and xml custom tags) to allow someone to define how to lay
> something out.
>
> I am working on a project where I need to allow non-technical people,
> who can work with some basic XML tags, to define an online form for our
> application. Because there are several complex issues relating to
> rendering the actual html form code, such as tying the fields to actual
> data fields in our db and validation code, I wanted to provide a
> simplified "form definition language" that was tailored to our specific
> application.
>
> Most of the time, this works fine. For example, a user can define the
> following...
>
> <page>
>  <section>
>    <title>Address Information</title>
>    <field name="Street1" type="text" required="true"'
>           label="Street Address" max-length="25" />
>    <field name="City" type="text" required="true"
>           label="City" max-length="50" />
>    <field name="State" type="dropdown" required="true"
>           label="State" max-length="25">
>        <list lookup="StateList" />
>    </field>
>    <field name="ZipCode" type="text" required="true"
>           label="Zip Code" max-length="15" />
>  </section>
> </page>
>
> And an xsl stylesheet would transform this into a nice form layout with
> all the complex issues handled.
>
> But, sometimes, the users want more control over the layout of the
> form. For example, they sometimes will want to have two fields on one
> line (rather than a single field on a single line), or perhaps to
> position labels on top of the data entry box instead of to the left. I
> am experimenting with allowing some control declaratively through the
> xml, like this...
>
> <field .... label-pos="top" ... />
>
> or
>
> <row>
>  <cell>
>    <field .... />
>  </cell>
>  <cell>
>    <field ... />
>  </cell>
> </row>
>
> But, now, I have introduced layout and formatting issues into the xml
> that was intended to define the form. Plus, now I have to create
> templates to transform these additional concepts into html.
>
> So, that is when I started wondering about allowing the use of XHTML
> mixed with the XML tags that define the form elements, as the previous
> post alludes to.
>
> I appreciate opinions from anyone on this challenge. Thanks!
>
> Kevin
>
>
> Dimitre Novatchev wrote:
>> "KW" <kevinw@a...> wrote in message
>> news:1167949889.753016.30180@q......
>> > If I have an xml snippet like...
>> >
>> > <mytag>
>> >  <h1>A Title Here</h1>
>> >  <p>A paragraph here</p>
>> >  <myothertag someatt="something">
>> >    <more tags />
>> >  </myothertag>
>> >  <p>A final paragraph</p>
>> > </mytag>
>> >
>> > which contains both XHTML and some custom XML tags, how can I have my
>> > XSL stylesheet process the XHTML tags using a <copy-of> approach
>> > (simply outputting the markup as is) and also process the custom XML
>> > tags using a <apply-templates> approach, all while maintaining the
>> > order of the items in the result tree?
>> >
>> > I know I could write templates for every possible HTML tag along with
>> > templates for my custom XML tags, but that seems like more work than
>> > necessary. The idea is that I want to be able to combine XHTML and
>> > custom tags within a specific element, but only really override the
>> > processing for the custom XML tags.
>> >
>> > Is this even possible?
>>
>> Yes, and it is very easy :o)
>>
>> Do read about "identity template" or "identity transformation".
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Dimitre Novatchev
>