On Aug 12, 2008, at 9:32 PM, Allen Wirfs-Brock wrote:
I don't necessarily disagree with Maciej concerning worrying about
"flexible" right now. However, there is now a very good chance that
a incremental revisions to the ECMAScript specification will be
completed and approved within the next 12 month. That revision is
likely change some of the ECMAScript specification devices that are
currently referenced from the WebIDL document. I don't know what
your timeframe for completion is, but it seems like it might make
sense to maintain some visibility of how the ECMAScript spec. is
evolving and how that might impact your spec. If there is interest,
I can prepare some feedback on your current draft that identifies
areas that are like to become problematic.
I am in both the ECMAScript and Web API working groups. I'm willing to
act as liaison to inform Cameron of relevant ECMAScript updates, once
the new direction for ECMAScript is more clearly settled (which I
believe will be in a matter weeks or at most a few months).
I agree that in general Web IDL should be written in reference to the
next rev of ECMAScript, I suggest only that we wait a bit until it is
more clear what the new spec formalisms will look like.
Regards,
Maciej
Allen Wirfs-Brock
-----Original Message-----
From: Maciej Stachowiak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 7:53 PM
To: Travis Leithead
Cc: Web Applications Working Group WG; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Allen Wirfs-
Brock; Pratap Lakshman (VJ#SDK)
Subject: Re: [WebIDL] ES3.1 'flexible' attribute and 'delete'
semantics
On Aug 12, 2008, at 8:31 AM, Travis Leithead wrote:
Cameron,
I recently became aware of Microsoft's involvement in the ECMAScript
3.1 effort as of about a month ago. (Including Allen & Pratap from
MS Jscript, who are driving that effort.) ES3.1 makes a few subtle
changes that I thought you'd like to follow up on, since they impact
the WebIDL spec, namely "DontDelete" is changing to "Flexible",
among other things which should be noted in WebIDL.
I've also done some recent investigation on how browsers handle
ECMAScript's operators (delete, new, instanceof, etc.) and found
that they are somewhat diverging in implementation; in particular
the 'delete' operator. I've noted that some implementations use the
delete operator in the DOM in the same spirit that it is speced in
ECMAScript--that is the delete operator removes a given property
completely. I've noted that other implementations only allow the
delete operator to remove a "shadowed" property on the DOM, but
never actual delete the underlying "built-in" property. I wondered
if WebIDL makes any mention of the behavior of ECMAScript operators
on host objects and how they should behave?
Since ECMAScript 3.0 is still the operative standard and the future
plans for ECMAScript have been unclear and may change markedly in the
future, I would advise against making this change at present.
Regards,
Maciej
