At the upcoming TPAC, there is an opportunity for F2F coordination
between these two groups, and the time slot between 10 O'Clock and Noon
on Friday has been suggested for this.
To help prime the pump, here are four topics suggested by ECMA TC39 for
discussion. On these and other topics, there is no need to wait for the
TPAC, discussion can begin now on the es-discuss mailing list.
- - -
The current WebIDL binding to ECMAScript is based on ES3... this needs
to more closely track to the evolution of ES, in particular it needs to
be updated to ES5 w.r.t the Meta Object Protocol. In the process, we
should discuss whether this work continues in the W3C, is done as a
joint effort with ECMA, or moves to ECMA entirely.
- - -
A concern specific to HTML5 uses WebIDL in a way that precludes
implementation of these objects in ECMAScript (i.e., they can only be
implemented as host objects), and an explicit goal of ECMA TC39 has been
to reduce such. Ideally ECMA TC39 and the W3C HTML WG would jointly
develop guidance on developing web APIs, and the W3C HTML WG would apply
that guidance in HTML5.
Meanwhile, I would encourage members of ECMA TC 39 who are aware of
specific issues to open bug reports:
http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/
And I would encourage members of the HTML WG who are interested in this
topic to read up on the following emails (suggested by Brendan Eich):
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es5-discuss/2009-September/003312.html
and the rest of that thread
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es5-discuss/2009-September/003343.html
(not the transactional behavior, which is out -- just the
interaction with Array's custom [[Put]]).
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2009-May/009300.html
on an "ArrayLike interface" with references to DOM docs at the bottom
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es5-discuss/2009-June/002865.html
about a WebIDL float terminal value issue.
- - -
There are larger (and less precise concerns at this time) about
execution scope (e.g., presumptions of locking behavior, particularly by
HTML5 features such as local storage). The two groups need to work
together to convert these concerns into actionable suggestions for
improvement.
- - -
We should take steps to address the following "willful violation":
If the script's global object is a Window object, then in JavaScript,
the this keyword in the global scope must return the Window object's
WindowProxy object.
This is a willful violation of the JavaScript specification current at
the time of writing (ECMAScript edition 3). The JavaScript
specification requires that the this keyword in the global scope
return the global object, but this is not compatible with the security
design prevalent in implementations as specified herein. [ECMA262]
- Sam Ruby
