Re: [webcomponents]: Of weird script elements and Benadryl

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 10:34 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>wrote:

> * Rick Waldron wrote:
> >On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 9:51 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
> wrote:
> >> * Rick Waldron wrote:
> >> >If I want to make a new button to put in the document, the first thing
> my
> >> >JS programming experience tells me:
> >> >
> >> >  new Button();
> >>
> >> And if you read code like `new A();` your programming experience would
> >> probably tell you that you are looking at machine-generated code.
> >
> >I'm not sure what your own experience is, but I completely disagree.
>
> I think it is easy to agree with your analogy above. My purpose was to
> offer reasons why it is a bad analogy that does not hold when you take
> into account various other constraints and problems. For the specific
> example, I think it is unreasonable for humans to define single-letter
> global names in a shared namespace, and even more unreasonable for some
> standards organisation to do so. With `A` in particular, there is also
> the problem that `<a>` might be "HTML" or it might be "SVG", so mapping
> `new Button()` to `<button>` is not an analogy that works all the time.
>

It's a good thing I never suggested this... I never assumed anything
cheaper then HTMLFooElement to construct a <foo>



>
> >> And between
> >>
> >>   new HTMLButtonElement();
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >>   new Element('button');
> >>
> >> I don't see why anyone would want the former in an environment where you
> >> cannot rely on `HTMLHGroupElement` existing (the `hgroup` element had
> >> been proposed, and is currently withdrawn, or not, depending on where
> >> you get your news from).
> >
> >The latter is indeed a much nicer to look at then the former, but Element
> >is higher then HTMLButtonElement, so how would Element know that an
> >argument with the value "button" indicated that a HTMLButtonElement should
> >be allocated and initialized? Some kind of nodeName => constructor map, I
> >suppose...? (thinking out loud)
>
> As above, `new Element('a')` does not indicate whether you want a HTML
> `<a>` element or a a SVG `<a>` element. When parsing strings there is,
> in essence, such a map, but there is more context than just the name.
> That may well be a design error, perhaps "HTML" and "SVG" should never
> have been separate namespaces.
>
>
I'm with you here, certainly unfortunate. But new SVGAElement() is pretty
straightforward.



>  >> in contrast to, if you will,
> >>
> >>   var button = new Button();
> >>   button.ownerDocument.example(...);
> >
> >I would expect this:
> >
> >  var button = new HTMLButtonElement();
> >  button.ownerDocument === null; // true
> >
> >  document.body.appendChild(button);
> >
> >  button.ownerDocument === document; // true
>
> Indeed. But browser vendors do not think like that.
>

I'm of the mind that browser vendors and implementors need to be
accountable to the developers using the platform, instead of developers
being hostages of the platform.

Rick


> --
> Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
> Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
> 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/
>