Re: Web IDL? An IDL for the Web?

Hello Collin.

Han (Collin) Xu:
> I read the Web IDL WD with great interest.  But the document says it's only
> a specification for use by specifications that define interfaces. So it's a
> specification for specification from my understanding.

Yes that’s right.  By itself, it’s not really of any use.  It’s meant to
be for other specifications to reference to get some particular
behaviour for the interfaces they define.

> If my memory is not at fault, there was a Member Submission by
> webMethods which has a quite similar name, Web Interface Definition
> Language (www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-widl-970922), and whose purpose is to
> provide a general method of representing request/response interactions
> over standard Web protocols.
> 
> So the two documents with nearly the same titles just talk about different
> things? I don't know whether it can also be used as an IDL for the Web as
> its name "Web IDL" suggests to me, since the Web IDL document says nothing
> about it. 
> 
> Anybody here can tell the truth?

As Anne says, it doesn’t have anything to do with that WIDL submission
(although I was aware of it at the time of Language Bindings for DOM
Specification’s renaming).  But it is probably a good idea to explicitly
call out in the introduction of Web IDL that it is not related to WIDL
apart from the name.

-- 
Cameron McCormack ≝ http://mcc.id.au/

Received on Wednesday, 3 September 2008 22:51:10 UTC