Bringing this back up because I recently chatted with one of @jkuester's colleagues at Medic and the topic of keeping forms in version control came up again. I mentioned that folks have written different tools to help with this, and in particular I recommended checking out @Sjlver's yxf.
I think there are two main reasons that XLSForm remains so popular:
- People who need to define forms are often very familiar with spreadsheets so it's a comfortable, portable context that offers just enough structure to make form authoring accessible. With tools like the XLSForm template, the chance of very common errors is reduced. YAML may seem simple but it requires quite a bit of extra rigor when editing by hand. IDEs can be helpful but most people who define forms don't use them as part of their regular work.
- It's very helpful when authoring complex forms to see both many questions and a lot of information about questions at the same time. A spreadsheet essentially maximizes both dimensions and makes it very easy to customize what you see. For example, people do things like hide all columns except for label and relevance expression at a particular phase of form design.
I'm curious to know what has happened over the last three years, @jkuester -- have you come to love XLSForm? Found alternatives that you prefer?