Re: WebIDL "Products", was Re: CR exit criteria for Web IDL

On Saturday, 24 March 2012 at 00:45, Cameron McCormack wrote:

> Marcos Caceres:
> > I don't know how the following relates to, or has any bearing on, the
> > exit criteria, but I feel I need to at least mention it (I've been
> > thinking about this for a few days now, and something about the above
> > is not sitting right with me).
> >  
> > There are at least five types of products I have seen in the wild
> > that make use of WebIDL directly.
> >  
> > 1. Specifications (human written): a number of specifications across
> > a number of working groups define interfaces in terms of WebIDL.
> > E.g., DOM4, HTML5, etc.
> >  
> > 2. Specifications (semi-generated): WebIDL is taken as input, and
> > out comes HTML and content. Examples include Respec.js and widlproc.
> > Respec.js is used by specifications in the DAP WG, as well as
> > IndexDB, as well as others. Widlproc has been used by groups outside
> > the W3C (namely Webinos and WAC).
> >  
> > 3. Test generators: WebIDL is taken as input, out comes lots of
> > tests. Example include the generator used to create this test suite:
> > http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets-api/test-suite/
> >  
> > 4. Code generators: WebIDL is taken as input, a code template comes
> > out as output. Example includes:
> > http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/sdk/sdk-experimental/c_salt-design/web-idl-and-c-salt
> >  
> > (I know of one other similar system used on a commercial product,
> > but I don't have a link to share)
> >  
> > 5. Browsers: browsers base (or will base) their behavior on it.
> >  
> > Of course, 5 is obviously the most important - and the one you are
> > basing the exit criteria on…. 1-4 may or many not be significant
> > enough to warrant the attention of the WG when considering
> > conformance requirements and exit criteria (depending on what members
> > feel is the priority). However, I have a feeling that WebIDL will
> > play a pretty important role in QA departments of browser makers. I
> > know it's played a very significant role in QA work I've been
> > involved in over the last few years.
>  
>  
>  
> I think the exit criteria implicitly #1 as well, since we
> need to base our #5 tests on specs that correctly use Web IDL.
>  
> I am not sure we could do anything useful for #2 - #4 in terms of exit  
> criteria.

Probably not (or not right now, anyway). I guess if there the spec goes through a revision on the future, and there is enough interest from people making interesting stuff, that parsing rules with error handling could be added; all the right bits appear to be in place. You can build so much cool stuff on-top of this spec that I'm pretty certain at some point we will need to define such things in the future.  

--  
Marcos Caceres

http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Saturday, 24 March 2012 12:44:29 UTC