Re: The interpretation of script

On Jan 17, 2011, at 22:48 , Norman Walsh wrote:
> John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org> writes:
>> Norman Walsh scripsit:
>>> In principle, there's no reasy why the browser couldn't equally
>>> execute application/xslt+xml or application/xproc+xml or
>>> application/normslanguage content.
>> 
>> I think this is more of a theoretical than a practical problem.  Despite
>> the code/data duality of XML (and Lisp), we typically know whether a given
>> piece of text is code or data.  The underpinnings of the xqib system know
>> that browsers treat application/xquery as inert data, but they make it
>> their job to give it an interpretation as a script.  If you don't want
>> your XQuery interpreted as a script, give it a media type of text/plain.
> 
> I think the implication is that text/javascript is the only type of
> script that will ever execute automatically. Even if we totally
> replace JavaScript with some new language in 20 years, we'll still
> have to shim it in place with JavaScript.

I don't think that we can work on this assumption. There are always new languages being developed, an increasing number of which are shimmed with JS in the browser. If one of them becomes particularly popular though, it doesn't seem impossible that it might start being supported directly in the browser. Transitioning to a state where the shim could be done without would take a good decade, but that's not such a scary time frame.

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/

Received on Tuesday, 18 January 2011 08:36:09 UTC