Re: Notes from Monday's meeting with TC39 folks

On Oct 8, 2009, at 7:34 AM, Brendan Eich wrote:

>>> The Reject category is informative, for WebIDL users and would-be  
>>> extenders.
>>
>> I don't think a spec needs to mention what's not in the spec.  
>> People already complain that it's too long. If this information is  
>> really valuable, we could publish it as a Note. That being said,  
>> I'm not sure there is anything really in this cateogry.
>
> Overloaded methods with different non-trailing argument types, as in  
> canvas's imageData methods, were a candidate -- IIRC (Cameron and  
> Mark should chime in here). These seem like anti-patterns.

I must have been thinking of drawImage (not "imageData"), as followups  
from Cameron suggest.


> Informative anti-pattern ("don't do this") advice seems critical  
> with WebIDL as it is today, or we'll have ES binding woes tomorrow  
> and forever.

This point seems important to me still, and I do not think we can yet  
try to constrain WebIDL so that you can only say things in it that  
have "good" ES bindings. Maybe some day; or perhaps even if possible  
it would be a mistake to so tie WebIDL to ES. But whatever we do we  
could use short-term informative advice, including on what not to  
imitate.

/be