| How comparable is InfoPath to XForms? At a high level, both seek to overcome a similar challenge: translating user interaction into XML. Upon closer examination, however, the two technologies differ in focus, target audience, and scope. - Focus
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The InfoPath application is focused on providing a superb visual environment, of similar quality to the rest of the Microsoft Office System suite, for creating and filling out forms. In contrast, the XForms specification is designed to encourage implementations not to focus exclusively on visual media, but rather to define only the intent behind various data-gathering controls. The XForms specification gives implementations wide latitude in choices relating to how a particular form control can be implemented. Additionally, while XForms is designed to be readily produced by automated tools, InfoPath appears to be put together in such a way that only hand-designed forms are easily possible. - Target Audience
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The recommended system requirements for InfoPath demand a fairly modern Intel-compatible computer: a Pentium III or greater as well as Microsoft Windows 2000 (with Service Pack 3) or greater. Further, the software is bundled only in the Enterprise version of Office System, which is only available on a subscription basis and thus only used by larger, more Microsoft-committed organizations. On the other hand, the XForms specification was designed to work on the broadest possible range of devices, from tiny phones and PDAs to beefy servers. XForms software is being made available in a variety of packages, both open source and commercial, on an assortment of platforms. - Scope
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XForms encourages development using a defined declarative XML syntax, while InfoPath, like HTML forms, continues to encourage the deployment of script. Some interesting differences are also found in the choices of form controls supported. For example, InfoPath includes ordered and unordered lists as a form control, but doesn't support the equivalent of a multiple selection or free entry select form control. This will be explored in greater depth later in this chapter
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