For DOM Core Ms2ger and I (and some others on IRC) decided to introduce a
subtle distinction between fire and dispatch. Dispatching is actually
going through the list of event targets with an initialized event whereas
firing is initializing the event and then dispatching it.
E.g. a specification can say "fire an event named x" and DOM Core defines
that to mean that you create an event of type Event, that all its flags
are unset (unless specified otherwise), apart from its trusted flag which
is true (when a specification says to dispatch an event it is trusted),
that its name is x, etc. and that after you have initialized it in that
way it is then dispatched.
We chose "fire" because HTML (and some other specifications, now including
XMLHttpRequest and Progress Events) already use it in that way and because
the more proper "initialize and dispatch" was thought to be too long for
frequent use.
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/domcore/raw-file/tip/Overview.html
--
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/
