Re: Remove numeric constants from WebRTC

On 12/30/2011 05:19 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Cullen Jennings<fluffy@cisco.com>  wrote:
>> I'll note that using strings instead of integers is somewhat crappy when an API call needs to be mapped to ENUMs in other programming languages such as C.
> We've moved away from caring about languages other than Javascript
> when designing web APIs; years of struggling with the turgid horror of
> the original DOM (designed for easy compat with Java) taught us that
> lesson.  ^_^  This is a large part of the reason why we created WebIDL
> rather than just continuing to use IDL.
>
> That said, if an API like this does need to be expressed in another
> language where enums are more natural than strings, there's nothing
> wrong with defining an enum in their binding.  It should just stay out
> of the web-facing API binding, which is meant to favor JS.
I believe the conversion between a C enum, a Java enum (the 2 are *not* 
semantic equivalents) and a string should be possible to write as part 
of WebIDL-parsing/code generation, if needed.

What worries me a bit about the WebIDL "enum" proposal is that the 
semantics of unspecified values is left to the binding, which makes it 
hard to generate consistent behaviour.