Extensible Forms Description Language (XFDL) is a class of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) specified in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) NOTE-XFDL-19980902, Extensible Forms Description Language (XFDL) 4.0, September 2, 1998. XFDL is a high-level computer language that facilitates defining a form as a single, stand-alone object using XML elements and attributes. It offers precise control over form layout, permitting replacement of existing business/government forms in a human-readable, open standard. A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to show its format. ... Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet Standard that extends the format of e-mail to support text in character sets other than US-ASCII, non-text attachments, multi-part message bodies, and header information in non-ASCII character sets. ... A Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) is a string that uniquely identifies the type of a class of items. ... A specialized markup language using SGML is used to write the electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary. ... Standards are produced by many organizations, some for internal usage only, others for use by a groups of people, groups of companies, or a subsection of an industry. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. ... The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (W3). ... The term computer language is a more expansive and alternate term for the more commonly-used term programming language. ... Open Standards are publicly available and implementable standards. ...

In addition to providing a syntax for in-line mathematical and conditional expressions, it allows the creator to include custom items, options, and external code functions.

XFDL not only supports multiple digital signatures, but the signatures can apply to specific sections of a form and prevent changes to signed content.

These advantages to XFDL have led large organizations such as the United States Army to migrate from forms in other formats to XFDL. The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States armed forces and has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ...

External links

• XML Coverpages
• Boyer, John: "XFDL: The Extensible Forms Description Language - An XML-based forms language for e-commerce." July 22, 2001.
• United States Army Publishing Directorate

Specifications

• Extensible Forms Description Language (XFDL) 4.0
• W3C XML homepage
• The XML 1.0 specification
• The XML 1.1 specification

Editors

See XML editor for editors and other editing tools. An XML editor is a markup language editor with added functionality to facilitate the editing of XML. This could be done in plain text in a text editor such as Vim, with all the code visible. ...

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