On 9/27/09 3:30 AM, Brendan Eich wrote:
I believe we could get rid of custom deleters from the Web platform if
Firefox and IE remove support for custom deleters in LocalStorage,
refuse to add it back, and refuse to implement it for DOMStringMap. If
that happened, I'm sure other browsers and the spec would follow suit.
I don't think I can convince my colleagues to remove the behavior from
WebKit if Gecko and Trident continue to support it.
I'll see what the relevant Mozilla WebAPI hackers think, if they're not
reading this thread. At this point I suspect it is "too late", in the
sense that we'd be taking risks with plaform compatibility we don't
accept in our release version/compatibility plan.
Well, that depends on what we mean by "remove". Probably not removable
in Gecko 1.9.1.x security updates. Probably removable (in my opinion)
in Gecko 1.9.3. Possibly in Gecko 1.9.2 if the decision is made soon.
What I don't have is data on how much the syntax is used, or how likely
Trident is to remove it too. If we remove it and Trident doesn't and
that means Webkit keeps shipping it and the spec doesn't change as a
result (which sounds to me like what Maciej is saying will be the
outcome in this situation; the spec part is my guess based on the .tags
experience) then from our point of view it's just wasted effort and web
developers being pissed off at us for not implementing The Spec (without
understanding that it's an early draft) and then we'd end up just having
to put deleters back in but lose a bunch of goodwill. That's a strictly
losing proposition for us.
If Webkit commits to removing if we remove and the editor commits to
removing from the spec in that circumstance, then I think we could make
the removal stick no matter what Trident does...
-Boris
P.S. I _am_ ccing es-discuss on this as on my other mails, but of
course that list bounces all mail from me, since I'm not a member. If
someone cares about letting that list's membership know that they're
missing part of the discussion and is able to do so, please go for it.