Re: Deprecating DOMFocusIn/DOMFocusOut

Hi, Maciej-

Maciej Stachowiak wrote (on 7/23/09 8:42 AM):
>
> On Jul 23, 2009, at 5:22 AM, Doug Schepers wrote:
>
>> I'm fine with deprecating the events, but I don't think it's helpful
>> to remove them from the spec. It would go counter to one of the goals
>> that the group set out with (documenting existing behavior), and would
>> actually introduce problems for SVG, XForms, and probably other specs
>> and implementations.
>
> As I said in my other email, I think the really important question is
> which focus-related events are mandatory implementation requirements,
> not which are or aren't deprecated.

Just to clarify terminology, we agree that deprecating events makes them 
non-mandatory, right?  Is that the general understanding of this group?

I also draw a distinction between non-mandatory (MAY) and deprecated 
(SHOULD NOT).  As I said before, I would go so far as to say that 
deprecated events should not be implemented by user agents that don't 
already support them, unless they have a good reason to do so; I 
wouldn't introduce non-mandatory undeprecated features to the spec.

I've added a definition of "deprecated" to the DOM3 Events spec, with 
the aim of clarifying the role of deprecation for authors and 
implementers. (I don't know if there's some better definition I should 
be pointing to elsewhere.)


>I think it would be fine to have
> events in the spec that aren't mandatory requirements, if there is value
> in defining their semantics for the implementations that do have them.

I think there is value to other implementers as well, in case they need 
to match the behavior of the other implementation.

I think the most value to introducing deprecated features to the spec 
may be to authors and script librarians, and I'm trying to address them 
in this spec as well.  Deprecation serves as a SHOULD NOT for authors, 
which is useful, but also informs them in case they have to use the feature.

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs

Received on Thursday, 23 July 2009 13:30:55 UTC