On Jun 30, 2009, at 8:12 PM, Cameron McCormack wrote:
Hi Steffen, Giovanni.
Giovanni Campagna:
[Callback], despite the names, does not mean that the interface will
be called back by a method accepting it (although that was the
initial
use case). It barely means that you can convert an Object (in the
ECMAScript sense) to an object in the WebIDL sense, of that
interface.
I agree with everything Giovanni said.
Regarding the name of the extended attribute: it used to be called
[NativeObject], but there were restrictions on it so that it could
only
be used on interfaces with operations (and not attributes). Ian then
requested it be renamed to [Callback], since that was more
descriptive.
Since that restriction has now been lifted, and [Callback] interfaces
can have attributes, I agree that [Callback] isn’t the most obvious
name
any more.
Anybody object to renaming it back to [NativeObject] then (or can
suggest a better name)?
The name NativeObject seems nondescriptive and could easily be taken
as the opposite of what it means. For example, in the browser context,
code written in C++ is often called "native" but code written in
JavaScript typically is not. But "NativeObject" would be applied to
interfaces that are expected to be implemented in JavaScript, perhaps
even just by specifying a function directly.
I'm not sure if there is a better word than "Callback" to connote an
interface that is expected to be implemented by clients of the API
rather than implementation of the API. Maybe "ClientInterface" or
"ClientObject".
Regards,
Maciej
