Re: ISSUE-65: Should Window spec add parentWindow property to documents?

On Apr 5, 2006, at 2:30 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote:

>
>> Options would be:
>> 1) forget about defaultView, just have parentWindow
>> 2) don't add parentWindow
>> 3) keep both
>> I favor #3.
>
> I can't say that I feel strongly about it, but having both seems  
> sort of redundant.

It's marginally non-redundant for languages where casting is  
explicit, since one gets you the AbstractView interface, and the  
other gets you Window. "window" and "self" are more redundant, but  
there we have both because both actually get used.

> What is the advantage over having just one of the two? If we add  
> both only opera is going to be conforming in this regard, if we  
> just add one then the number of browsers that work out of the box  
> is going to be greater.

I think the spec already has seemingly simple and obvious  
requirements that make at least one existing browser implementation  
non-conformant, and there will probably be at least one of these for  
each browser. Opera, Safari and Win IE and Mac IE already fail at  
least some minor things on the test suite. So in terms of requiring  
things that not all browsers already conform to, we have already  
crossed the Rubicon.

"defaultView" is already part of the DOM, so we can't really "remove"  
it per se. "parentWindow" is already in IE and Opera and we'll almost  
certainly add it to Safari very soon. I think it would probably  
improve interoperability to put it in the spec, even though the  
duplication is somewhat icky design-wise.

> I don't have a strong opinion on which of the two to use though.

I'm still leaning towards both.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 5 April 2006 09:56:43 UTC