Re: More Widget 1.0 Thoughts

On Feb 23, 2007, at 6:07 PM, ext Stephen Paul Weber wrote:

> From the requirements doc : "The APIs that authors can use to
> programmatically access..."
> Is the list there given considered an exhaustive list of what may be
> treated by the spec?  Much of what is there is not mentioned in the
> draft.  Preferences is a nice thing, but what about non-preference
> data?  Is that to be treated or not?  Is there a place for widgets to
> be able to launch other widgets or dialogs, etc?

As currently written, parts of section 1.1.2 need clarification,
particularly regarding the scope of the WAF WG's Widgets work.

This section begins with the following broad statement and then
enumerates some of the aspects of a Widget system that could be
standardized:

[[
The Working Group has identified that the following aspects of
widgets should be standardized:
]]

Most of the items in the list are indeed within the scope of the
packaging format and the manifest. However, the following sub-item is
_not_ within scope:

[[
Access to services particular to the device on which the widget has
been instantiated (eg. camera, and the Short Message Service (SMS)).
]]

My recommendation is to remove the above. Although I agree that
standardized APIs to such services would be useful, the WAF WG is not
chartered to create such APIs (although our documents could of course
contain references to such documents).


Art Barstow