- From: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU>
- Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:49:38 -0400
- To: Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitchen@gmail.com>
- CC: Web Applications Working Group WG <public-webapps@w3.org>
Garrett Smith wrote: > I can appreciate the desire to make the task of implementing the spec > in an automated fashion. That is a desire, however, not a need. So is everything else. This particular desire has great benefits, however, so it needs to have great drawbacks as well to not be done, right? > What I opposed is calling null a string. Null is not a string by the > definition in the DOM 3 spec[1] (You linked to the DOM2 spec, but DOM3 says the same thing.) That definition does not necessarily preclude null being considered a DOMString, and in fact parts of the spec consider it so. I'm honestly a little confused why you care so much about what something is "called" as opposed to what it "does". The latter is what really matters. > However, WebIDL does lump null into domstring. Yes, because de-facto DOM does this already. > What WebIDL does creates compatibility issues in an attempt to standardize bugs. It doesn't create any issues that were not there. > Moving forward, if null is allowed, it should not be called a string. Moving forward doesn't help with the existing DOM interfaces, which certainly allow passing null for a DOMString. > However, if only a DOMString is allowed, and null is passed, it should > not require a one-off mapping. Ideally, yes. That's why there should be a default mapping, with one-offs flagged as needed (ideally rarely). -Boris
Received on Wednesday, 27 August 2008 21:50:21 UTC