On Feb 16, 2011, at 4:54 PM, David Herman wrote: > I say: let's make it typed array in the short term, but TC39 will spec it as > an array of uint32 according to the binary data spec. We will try to make the > binary data spec as backwards compatible as possible with typed arrays > anyway. So in the near term, implementors can use typed arrays, but when they > have implementations of the full binary data spec, they can change to use > those. It'll probably be a slightly backwards-incompatible change, but by > keeping them relatively API-compatible, it shouldn't make too much difference > in practice. Plus we can warn people that that change is coming.
Dave, most browsers other than FF4 internally box all integers with with 32-significant bits. Some may box with 31 or even 30 significant bits. So if we spec. the value as a uint32 and (they are truly random enough) then at least half and possible 75% or more of the values in the array will be boxed in many browsers. Such boxing will have a much higher cost than immediate uint16 values. That's why I propose 16-bit values. Allen
