Re: Web IDL Garden Hose (was: ECMA TC 39 / W3C HTML and WebApps WG coordination)

On Sep 25, 2009, at 11:32 PM, Brendan Eich wrote:

> On Sep 25, 2009, at 11:28 PM, Brendan Eich wrote:
>
>> We seem to agree, perhaps vehemently :-/.
>>
>> One last time, for the record: it is a bug in ES specs that you  
>> can't follow th
>
> Sorry, rogue cut before send. "it's a bug in ES specs that you can't  
> follow them in order to implement a web-compatible JS engine."
>
> Although some of "web-compatible JS" really does belong in W3C  
> specs, not ES specs, it's clear ES1 pretending there is only one  
> global object did no one any favors. Ditto for execution model and  
> (ultimately) split windows, as Hixie pointed out in raising the  
> conflict between HTML5 and ES1-3 (and now ES5).
>
> Just wanted to reassure you, since you seemed to think otherwise,  
> that no one views it as a feature that ES specs don't specify  
> enough. HTML4 specs didn't either. We're getting there.

That's right. ES3, HTML4 and DOM Level 2 were all missing many things  
needed to implement Web-compatible behavior, as well as having  
requirements that were in some cases contrary to real-world  
compatibility. Writing a new browser engine based on those specs  
required multiple years of trial and error and reverse engineering  
after implementing the spec behavior. Take it from me - that's what we  
had to do to make WebKit (even building on the foundation of KHTML 
+KJS, which had already done some of the reverse engineering).

ES5, HTML5, Web IDL and some of the Web Apps specs (like  
XMLHttpRequest and DOM3 Events) are huge steps forward on this front.  
They don't solve every problem, but they are massive improvements in  
getting the Web platform correctly specified.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Saturday, 26 September 2009 19:34:22 UTC