On 12/29/12 10:49 PM, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
One other note.
And one last note, promise.
The point is that SpiderMonkey is working on changing its internal model
to more closely match the spec. And I agree with that approach: for any
somewhat complicated spec, using an internal model that doesn't match
the spec model is just a recipe for pain and non-conformance. You can
try to fake things with enough epicycles, but like any epicycle setup as
soon as you can make more accurate measurements you have to add more
epicycles. That means that things meant as "specification devices"
become de-facto conformance requirements as specs grow hidden
dependencies on those exact algorithms being used.
As a simple example, any time someone adds a DOM getter that calls into
page script (assuming there is no such thing already, which I woudln't
be on!) calls to [[GetOwnProperty]] become script-detectable if DOM
properties are value properties (because you have to call the getter to
fill in the descriptor), so if at that point you aren't implementing
exactly the spec's algorithms you're detectably non-conformant.
And even if you don't call into page script, there are various getters
that have detectable side-effects already (e.g. any of the CSSOM getters
have side-effects on starting times of CSS transitions). Thus if you
use a specification device in terms of a proxy that implements
getOwnPropertyDescriptor only, suddenly sets of offsetWidth (a readonly
property, note) start having side-effects which they don't have right
now, and implementations that don't have those side-effects become
non-conformant. Again, just as an example of how a "specification
device" can turn into an unintended conformance requirement.
So I'm very much against using a specification device that doesn't match
the intended implementation, which is what you seem to be proposing. In
my experience, that leads to implementations which don't actually match
the spec in all sorts of edge cases. If we're lucky, they match each
other and all that has to happen is the spec has to be rewritten
somehow. But more commonly they don't match each other either, and you
end up with interoperability problems, which means your standardization
effort just failed...
-Boris
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