Re: Socializing the high level API during our F2F meeting in April

+1

[added rbarnes]

After some discussions at Mozilla with those that would consume any crypto APIs at scale, the path forward for use is more like this:

Design several shim APIs around high-level use cases and actually write these shims using Polycrypt as the stand-in low-level API. In this case we can take a "promises" style approach without trying to shoehorn promises into the DOM.

Cheers,

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arun Ranganathan" <arun@mozilla.com>
To: "GALINDO Virginie" <Virginie.GALINDO@gemalto.com>
Cc: "public-webcrypto@w3.org Group" <public-webcrypto@w3.org>, "Wendy Seltzer" <wseltzer@w3.org>, "Harry Halpin" <hhalpin@w3.org>, "Alex Russell" <slightlyoff@chromium.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 12:51:46 PM
Subject: Re: Socializing the high level API during our F2F meeting in April

Virginie,

>  
> Taking the suggestion of Arun made on IRC, we could have this 2 hours conversation at the end of the first day, as a pre-social-event, to avoid taking time on our main discussions.


I'm not totally sure if I get credit for making any suggestion such as this, but I'm in favor of a discussion like this :)  I'd like to strongly reiterate that I think the WG should focus on getting the low-level API right first and foremost.  Within Mozilla, there's been some discussion of a high level API itself being a use case for the low-level API.  Typically, the notion that libraries should wrap lower-level primitives with a convenience layer has gone out of vogue; folks like Alex Russell have suggested that doing so suggests that our initial API hasn't really been designed for elegance and simplicity in the first place.  If we do talk about getting our API right for developers, and we are going to have a public discussion, I'd like folks like Alex to be in the loop as well.  

The Crypto API features specific challenges ("expert" vs. "non-expert"), given the issues we've been discussing on this listserv (and the challenges of simplifying things with "defaults").  Getting a low-level API right has enough work in it to keep us out of trouble for a while.


> So I would like to get the view from the WG participants to have a 2 hours meeting on high level API, from 17:00 to 19:00 on the 23rd of April.
> Would you attend, contribute, invite people in your network to attend ? All comment, alternative suggestion are welcome.

I'd attend!

-- A*

Received on Wednesday, 3 April 2013 18:01:47 UTC