Re: Moving File API: Directories and System API to Note track?

While I don't see any other browsers showing interest in implementing
the FileSystem API as currently specced, I do see Firefox coming
around to the belief that a filesystem-style API is a good thing,
hence their DeviceStorage API.  Rather than scrap the API that we've
put 2 years of discussion and work into, why not work with us to
evolve it to something you'd like more?  If you have objections to
specific attributes of the API, wouldn't it be more efficient to
change just those things than to start over from scratch?  Or worse,
to have the Chrome filesystem API, the Firefox filesystem API, etc.?

If I understand correctly, folks at Mozilla think having a directory
abstraction is too heavy-weight, and would prefer users to slice and
dice paths by hand.  OK, that's a small change, and the
functionality's roughly equivalent.  We could probably even make
migration fairly easy with a small polyfill.

Jonas suggests FileHandle to replace FileWriter.  That's clearly not a
move to greater simplicity, and no polyfill is possible, but it does
open up the potential for higher perfomance, especially in a
multi-process browser.  As i said when you proposed it, I'm
interested, and we'd also like to solve the locking use cases.

Let's talk about it, rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater.

	Eric

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 4:04 AM, Olli Pettay <Olli.Pettay@helsinki.fi> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>
> I think we should discuss about moving File API: Directories and System API
> from Recommendation track to Note. Mainly because the API hasn't been widely
> accepted nor
> implemented and also because there are other proposals which handle the same
> use cases.
> The problem with keeping the API in recommendation track is that people
> outside
> standardization world think that the API is the one which all the browsers
> will implement and
> as of now that doesn't seem likely.
>
>
>
>
> -Olli
>

Received on Friday, 21 September 2012 23:32:47 UTC