On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Ian Hickson <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, David Flanagan wrote: >> >> The structured clone algorithm currently allows ImageData and Blob >> objects to be cloned but doesn't mention ArrayBuffer. Is this >> intentional? I assume there are no security issues involved, since one >> could copy the bytes of an ArrayBuffer into either a Blob or an >> ImageData object in order to clone them. > > It's intentional in that I'm waiting for ArrayBuffer to be more stable > before I add it throughout the spec. (Same with CORS and the various > places that might support cross-origin communication, e.g. Web Workers, > Server-Sent Events, <img>+<canvas>, etc.)
There's been some preliminary discussion within the WebGL working group (where ArrayBuffer / Typed Arrays originated) about using ArrayBuffer with Web Workers in particular. There is a strong desire to support handoff of an ArrayBuffer from the main thread to a worker and vice versa; this would allow efficient producer/consumer queues to be built without violating ECMAScript's shared-nothing semantics. All of the parties involved are pretty busy getting WebGL 1.0 out the door; once that happens, we aim to make one more revision to the Typed Array spec to support (1) read-only arrays for more efficient XHRs and (2) handoff of ArrayBuffers. Expect public discussions to start in about six to eight weeks. -Ken
