markleeds wrote on Friday, August 11, 2006:
formscript.pl does not require any programming skills. No more computer skills than are necessary to install OpenEMR.
Still, I totally agree that we need an easy interface for users who don’t want to ever see a command line prompt, or who don’t have access to the server.
Here’s my idea:
First, keep support for the forms we have now. There’s nothing like a hand-crafted form. There is no limit to the features and control that can be built into a these kinds of forms. An easy form building interface will impose limits.
Next, we can have a form building screen that can be popped up from the administration/forms page. It could be similar to the interfaces used by popular portals like Yahoo to design personalized interfaces (as in my.yahoo.com). Standard widgets can be selected and placed relative to the existing widgets on the form.
I recommend that these forms not be turned into traditional forms in the forms directory. They should have their attributes (the types of widgets and relative placement etc…) stored in a database table. A Form Interpreter can be used to ‘trick’ the system into thinking that these forms are traditional forms. Data could be stored in a table that will include fields like the following:
form_id
field_name
field_data
or whatever. Basically, form data would be stored not all in a single record, but over a series of records for each form entry. This would allow the flexibility to change a form or delete a form without losing usefulness of the data.
So, to summarize, I am proposing continued support for existing forms, and a new form system where form attributes are stored in the database rather than in files and interpreted by new form interpreter code to allow the existing user interface to remain consistant.
I would be happy to do work on this project. I think we need more discussion, debate, and direct input from more actual users to determine the best course of action. It’s difficult for programmers and advanced users to have insight into what will be easy for the typical user. Of course, most registered users on this site are probably advanced.