Re: [WebIDL] remove modules

(Previously send to public-script-coord but I was asked to forward to
webapps.)

Hi,

Two things to be aware of if we drop the feature:
>
> One, BONDI folks were using IDL modules, IIRC.  Although I think their
> spec stabilised well before now, so presumably they’re dependent on an
> earlier WD of Web IDL, and thus it’s probably not a big deal to drop the
> feature, aside from the fact that we should focus on the Web and not
> other concerns.
>

The BONDI spec has been superseded by the WAC spec [1] and this still uses
modules. The WAC spec is frozen and there is already a growing list of
incompatibilities between the WAC WebIDL and the latest WebIDL spec - so in
any event there would need to be changes if WAC creates a new revision of
its spec and wishes to migrate to the latest WebIDL.

However, the motivation for using modules I think still stands, in that a
module is the unit by which support for a given feature is enabled.

That is, we associate a WebIDL module with one or more features (in the
sense of [2]). If one or more of the features associated with a module is
successfully requested, then all of the interfaces belonging to that module
are available, and all of the objects (eg interface objects) entailed by
those interfaces are instantiated.

If modules are dropped from WebIDL, then there would still be a desire I
think to have a logical grouping of interfaces, but we would have to specify
that in prose instead of in WebIDL.

Thanks - Paddy

[1]:http://specs.wacapps.net/2.0/jun2011/deviceapis/webidl.html
[2]: http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/#the-feature-element-and-its-attributes