- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:28:13 -0700
- To: Yehuda Katz <wycats@gmail.com>
- Cc: Allen Wirfs-Brock <Allen.Wirfs-Brock@microsoft.com>, public-webapps WG <public-webapps@w3.org>, "Mark S. Miller" <erights@google.com>, es-discuss <es-discuss@mozilla.org>
On Sep 28, 2009, at 11:34 PM, Yehuda Katz wrote: > It would be pretty nice if the language bindings of WebIDL were > available in pure ES, where possible. To some degree, that is not > currently possible (in ES3), but it will be a lot better in ES5. I > think it might actually be possible to get a large degree of > completion just using the JavaScript available in Spidermonkey. What do you mean by "available"? A lot of Web IDL interfaces are actually implementable in ES5 (at least the interface part - not necessarily the underlying functionality without relying on APIs outside the language). Using ES5 as the reference baseline would help make this more clear perhaps. - Maciej > > This might also be a useful step in the direction that I was hoping > for in some earlier postings. > > -- Yehuda > > On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 11:22 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> > wrote: >> >> On Sep 28, 2009, at 10:12 AM, Allen Wirfs-Brock wrote: >> >>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: es-discuss-bounces@mozilla.org [mailto:es-discuss- >>>> bounces@mozilla.org] On Behalf Of Robin Berjon >>>>> >>>>> There is no old version. >>>> >>>> Right, this is v1. What previous W3C API specifications had >>>> relied on >>>> was either OMG IDL, or the common lore understanding that people >>>> were >>>> familiar with this way of expressing APIs, so they'd get it right. >>>> We're trying to do a bit better than that. >>>> >>> >>> The primary concern of TC39 members is with the WebIDL ECMAScript >>> bindings. I haven't yet heard any particular concerns from TC9 >>> about WebIDL >>> as an abstract language independent interface specification >>> language. Since >>> W3C seems committed to defining language independent APIs, I would >>> think >>> that the language independent portion of the WebIDL spec. would be >>> the only >>> possible blocker to other new specs. >>> >>> It seems like this might be a good reason to decouple the >>> specification of >>> the actual WebIDL language from the specification of any of its >>> language >>> bindings. >> >> Defining the Web IDL syntax without defining any language bindings >> would not >> be very useful: >> >> 1) The syntax is to a large extent designed around being able to >> express the >> right behavior for language bindings, particularly ECMAScript >> bindings. So >> we can't really lock it down without knowing that it can express >> the needed >> behavior in the bindings, which requires the bindings to be done. >> >> 2) To actually implement any spec using Web IDL, implementors need >> at least >> one language binding, and most implementors will consider an >> ECMAScript >> binding to be essential. Without the bindings being defined, it >> will not be >> possible to build sound test suites for the specs using Web IDL. >> >> 3) The whole point of Web IDL was to define how DOM and related Web >> APIs map >> to languages, and especially ECMAScript. Previous specs used OMG >> IDL where >> the mapping was not formally defined, and implementors had to read >> between >> the lines. Removing language bindings from Web IDL would return us >> to the >> same bad old state, thus missing the point of doing Web IDL in the >> first >> place. >> >> Regards, >> Maciej >> >> _______________________________________________ >> es-discuss mailing list >> es-discuss@mozilla.org >> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss >> > > > > -- > Yehuda Katz > Developer | Engine Yard > (ph) 718.877.1325 >
Received on Tuesday, 29 September 2009 10:28:55 UTC