Re: CHANGE: Remove numeric constants from WebRTC API

I think we should do whatever Hickson is going to do for HTML5 spec. 

On Jan 10, 2012, at 2:10 AM, Harald Alvestrand wrote:

> Hello group, and happy 2012!
> 
> One of the last discussions of 2011 was the discussion triggered by Tab Atkins about numeric constants in the API: he strongly recommended against them, and recommended that we instead use strings (possibly in the special form of WebIDL enumerations, which are mapped to JavaScript strings by the language binding.
> 
> It seems to me clear from the discussion that:
> 
> - The WebIDL community is strongly in favour of such a change
> - There has been weak or no real opposition to the idea in the WebRTC WG
> - If such a change is to be made, it is better to do it as soon as possible, so that implementations don't have to change after significant deployment of code has been made.
> 
> But it's a bit of work, and I don't want to ask the editors to do it if there's the possibility that the WG could decide not to do it anyway.
> 
> I'm therefore calling for the WG's consensus to do this change.
> It affects at least the following:
> 
> - MediaStreamTrack: readyState (LIVE, MUTE and ENDED)
> - PeerConnection: readyState, iceState and sdpState
> 
> In all four cases, the current "const unsigned short" declarations woudl be replaced with strings; as I understand the enum spec from WebIDL [1], this:
> 
>    const unsigned short LIVE = 0;
>    const unsigned short MUTED = 1;
>    const unsigned short ENDED = 2;
>    readonly attribute unsigned short readyState;
> 
> would become this:
> 
>    enum ReadyStateType { "live", "muted", "ended" };
>    readonly attribute ReadyStateType readyState;
> 
> Please comment on this - the chairs will attempt to draw a conclusion based on mail arrived on Tuesday, Jan 17, at 9AM GMT (7 days from now).
> 
>                   Harald, for the chairs
> 
> [1] http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/WebIDL/ - latest draft 5 Jan 2012
>

Received on Thursday, 12 January 2012 16:40:39 UTC