Re: Charter question on form of API, was Re: DOM based API

On Jun 6, 2008, at 12:49 PM, Matt Womer wrote:

> Before digging into item 2, I want to mention that on the Web there  
> seems to be a slang-like usage of the term "DOM interface".  As near  
> as I can tell it is mistakenly used to mean an interface that's  
> available via a global Object, but isn't necessarily related to the  
> DOM and it's interfaces.  I'd like to suggest that we be careful in  
> our use of terms like "DOM interface", and restrict it to mean those  
> interfaces that are related in some way to the DOM.  (I realize  
> that's not a very strict definition, but I think it solves the  
> issue).  Otherwise confusion abounds.

In the Web client context, the term DOM is used in many ways. In order  
of decreasing generality:

1) All APIs offered by the browser hosting environment (thus for  
example the term "DOM Level 0").

2) Only the APIs offered by the browser hosting environment defined by  
W3C standards (so for example DOM2 Core, DOM2 Range and Traversal, the  
SVG DOM as defined in SVG 1.1, the HTML DOM as defined in HTML5, and  
Selectors API would all be DOM APIs, but any non-standard browser  
extensions are not, and things like Window were not DOM APIs until  
HTML5 defined them).

3) Only the APIs offered by the browser hosting environment that are  
defined by W3C standards which have DOM in the title or otherwise  
refer to the interface as a DOM (that would exclude Selectors API from  
the above list).

4) Only the W3C Standard APIs that have interfaces which inherit from  
DOM Core interfaces (but that would exclude DOM2 Range & Traversal and  
DOM2 Style!)

5) Only the W3C Standard APIs that were created by the former DOM  
Working Group and have DOM in the title (which would confusingly mean  
that DOM 2 HTML is part of the DOM, but the SVG 1.1 interfaces are  
not, nor is the HTML DOM as specified by HTML5).

6) Only DOM Core itself.

I suggest we stay away from arguing what "DOM" means and use terms  
that are less ambiguous. For instance, we could say "Web API" for #1,  
"Standard Web API" for #2, and "DOM tree-based" for #4.

So I think your item #2 is about exploring a DOM tree-based interface  
for geolocation information, while I think most of us would just like  
to create a Standard Web API for geolocation information and not  
specifically one that is DOM tree-based.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 6 June 2008 20:51:15 UTC