RE: [WebIDL] ES3.1 'flexible' attribute and 'delete' semantics

I don't necessarily disagree with Maciej concerning worrying about "flexible" right now.  However, there is now a very good chance that a incremental revisions to the ECMAScript specification will be completed and approved within the next 12 month.  That revision is likely change some of the ECMAScript specification devices that are currently referenced from the WebIDL document.  I don't know what your timeframe for completion is, but it seems like it might make sense to maintain some visibility of how the ECMAScript spec. is evolving and how that might impact your spec. If there is interest, I can prepare some feedback on your current draft that identifies areas that are like to become problematic.

Allen Wirfs-Brock

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Maciej Stachowiak [mailto:mjs@apple.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 7:53 PM
> To: Travis Leithead
> Cc: Web Applications Working Group WG; cam@mcc.id.au; Allen Wirfs-
> Brock; Pratap Lakshman (VJ#SDK)
> Subject: Re: [WebIDL] ES3.1 'flexible' attribute and 'delete' semantics
>
>
> On Aug 12, 2008, at 8:31 AM, Travis Leithead wrote:
>
> >
> > Cameron,
> >
> > I recently became aware of Microsoft's involvement in the ECMAScript
> > 3.1 effort as of about a month ago. (Including Allen & Pratap from
> > MS Jscript, who are driving that effort.) ES3.1 makes a few subtle
> > changes that I thought you'd like to follow up on, since they impact
> > the WebIDL spec, namely "DontDelete" is changing to "Flexible",
> > among other things which should be noted in WebIDL.
> >
> > I've also done some recent investigation on how browsers handle
> > ECMAScript's operators (delete, new, instanceof, etc.) and found
> > that they are somewhat diverging in implementation; in particular
> > the 'delete' operator. I've noted that some implementations use the
> > delete operator in the DOM in the same spirit that it is speced in
> > ECMAScript--that is the delete operator removes a given property
> > completely. I've noted that other implementations only allow the
> > delete operator to remove a "shadowed" property on the DOM, but
> > never actual delete the underlying "built-in" property. I wondered
> > if WebIDL makes any mention of the behavior of ECMAScript operators
> > on host objects and how they should behave?
>
> Since ECMAScript 3.0 is still the operative standard and the future
> plans for ECMAScript have been unclear and may change markedly in the
> future, I would advise against making this change at present.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>

Received on Thursday, 14 August 2008 04:37:47 UTC