RE: Help with WebIDL v1?

> From: Sam Ruby [mailto:rubys@intertwingly.net]
> 
> Another way to phrase this question: what would the CR exit criteria be for
> such a WebIDL v1?  The reason why I bring this up is that if they are too low
> to be meaningful, that brings into the question whether or not this exercise
> is meaningful.  Similarly, if they are too high to be likely to be met.

I think just having the syntax in v1 does not make progressing v1 a useful indeavor. My understanding of how V1 was being maintained up-to-date was that updates to the binding that were shared across common syntax in both v1 and v2 were being back-ported to v1 so that there were no inconsistencies in binding. In other words, if you were looking at v1, you'd see the latest algorithms and bindings, but for areas of v2 that were wholly new concepts, those would not exist in v1. 

Based on what Boris has said, I'm guessing that this practice has been discontinued :(

I don't think we need to have a requirement of maintaining an "ES5-level" goal for v1. Large parts of ES6 are now shipping in various browsers, so we really have no reason to keep an ES5-based spec in development.

Coming back to CR exit criteria, I think we need to hold v1 to the same standard we're holding v2, which means [at least] porting back the updated algorithms for handling sequences, named properties, indexed properties, etc. which have diverged.

I suspect that there are still some shared areas of v2 and v1 that are not yet locked down yet, and we should focus our collective efforts on stabilizing those features before working on v2-only syntax features.

> If, on the other hand, there is a "sweet spot" some place in the middle; then
> perhaps this effort should proceed.

I'm not sure what a middle-ground would look like--perhaps a less-strenuous test suite? E.g., HTML's "passive-permissive" testing approach?

> By analogy, the parsing of http: absolute URLs is solid and unlikely to change,
> but determining the origin of file: URLs isn't.  Clearly identifying what parts
> are widely deployed and unlikely to change vs those that aren't may be a
> path forward.

And I think that v1 should be that slice of "widely deployed" and unlikely to change features. If that means pulling out sequence from v1, then perhaps that's another approach.

I'm of the view that we should publish something soon to enable the stable reference for a variety of specs. Publishing is a process that helps focus and direct our efforts, and even if it's not perfect, it becomes a building block for future updates. We've let WebIDL just "hang-out" for too long now, and folks new to the area don't know what's more stable and what isn't.

Again, publishing WebIDL is important to Microsoft, and we believe important to a lot of other customers. Consequently I'm ready to put pen to paper to make this happen if we can agree on a direction. Ideally, this effort doesn't distract too much from active work on v2.

> - Sam Ruby

Received on Wednesday, 3 December 2014 19:02:11 UTC