Re: Moving Window and stuff out of HTML5

On Nov 19, 2009, at 1:11 PM, Krzysztof Maczyński wrote:

> Dear WGs,
> (Ccing public-webapps@w3.org.)
>
>>> They could be split out into a separate specification or
>>> specifications,
>>> and HTML5 would probably not even need to reference them.
>>
>> I agree that it's good design in principle to split the core platform
>> APIs (window, navigator, etc) into separate specs.
>>
>> However, it is also much harder than it may seem.
> SVG 1.2 Tiny has some of this stuff. Window Object 1.0 WD is a more  
> elaborate take, in hiatus because of no active editor and apparently  
> also of unclearness still covering the dependencies and what should  
> therefore go where to achieve a workable and reasonable suit of  
> orthogonal specs.
> I suggest scaling the Window Object 1.0 WD down to what SVG 1.2 Tiny  
> specifies, possibly with some small and uncontroversial additions.  
> This spec could progress to Rec quickly, having been long overdue  
> and implemented since 1990s. Then version 2.0 could use a better  
> approximation of our wishlists.

Speaking as the former editor, I think Window Object 1.0 actually  
specifies too little to be a useful for anything in HTML5. Cutting it  
down further would probably not result in something useful. That's  
part of why I stopped work.

>
>> To be clear, this list *is* the right venue for discussing the draft,
>> including ideas for changing it.
> You also wrote to Shelley Powers:
>> In the meantime, please do not attempt to quash discussion of what is
>> in the draft.
> The way I understood Shelley, and actually support this position, is  
> that placement of these APIs in HTML5 drafts is wrong to begin with  
> because the HTML5 WG isn't chartered to work on APIs which aren't  
> (shouldn't be) particularly associated with HTML. Window (although a  
> misnomer) is the most important badly missing piece in Web  
> scripting, and currently only in SVG (at least as W3C specs go, and  
> of course unless I'm missing something) can it be used legally (e.g.  
> expecting a property called document on the global object if the  
> language is ECMAScript).

That is a reasonable position to take and it's fine for Shelley (or  
you) to pursue it. But for now the Navigator object is in HTML5, and  
we should continue to provide a forum for discussing it until such  
time as we decide to remove it.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 20 November 2009 00:33:05 UTC