Re: ECMA TC 39 / W3C HTML and WebApps WG coordination

Three distinct topics are being mixed up here:

1. Whether to use WebIDL or some unproposed alternative.

2. Whether to use catchall patterns in new WebIDL-defined interfaces.

3. Whether the JS WebIDL bindings should be standardized by Ecma or W3C.

The straw man (0. Whether to remove catchall patterns from existing  
WebIDL interfaces required for backward compatibility) is nonsense and  
I'm going to ignore it from here on.

My positions are:

1. WebIDL, the bird in the hand (I agree with Sam: go invent something  
better, come back when you're done).

2. Don't keep perpetuating catchall patterns, they are confusing for  
developers and costly for implementors and static analysis tools, even  
if implementable in some future ES edition.

3. Don't care.

I differ from Mark on 3, but that's ok. What is not ok is to waste a  
lot of time arguing from divergent premises that need to be unpacked  
or else let alone for now, when we could be collaborating on concrete  
issues such as split windows, execution model, catchall policing, etc.

Mark's Joe with his JoeLang bindings for WebIDL vs. Anne's point about  
the primacy of JavaScript bindings for WebIDL-defined interfaces is  
not going to lead to rapid agreement on putting the ES WebIDL bindings  
in Ecma vs. leaving them in W3C. It's a rathole, IMHO.

Both points of view have merit, but precedent and possession matter  
too, and Ecma can't plausibly fork or steal the binding spec. We're  
trying to collaborate, so let's get on with that hard work instead of  
trying to assail one another with principles that can't encompass the  
whole picture.

Hope this helps,

/be

Received on Friday, 25 September 2009 16:57:09 UTC