Re: Fwd: Implementing HTMLDocument on all Documents (detailed review of the DOM)

* Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>This is from the HTML group, but my first impression is that Simon is  
>right. Unfortunately my other first impression is that nobody is currently  
>really working on the relevant specs - is that true?

As far as the Web API Working Group is concerned, Simon would be asking
for new specifications to be produced, and in that sense you are right.

As for the specific issue:

>We're not happy with implementing the HTMLDocument interface on all
>Document objects. It will affect all other types of documents and the
>naming of their members in the future, and any additions to HTMLDocument
>in the future becomes risky because it might break non-HTML documents.

The same is true for any interface that Document objects implement,
like those in the DOM Events or DOM Traversal specifications. While
I could readily agree that implementing HTMLDocument on all Document
objects might not be a good idea, I have a hard time seeing how:

>We'd rather have the members of HTMLDocument that are useful for all types
>of documents to be moved to the Document interface. This would probably be:

would be any kind of improvement. You would have to explain why they
need to be on Document rather than on a DocumentWithUsefulStuff inter-
face. Clearly adding them to Document would make implementers who do
not and do not plan to implement HTMLDocument anywhere at all unhappy
(important reasons being that they are poorly designed and depend on
not particularily common features like interactivity).
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
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Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 16:36:31 UTC