[whatwg] link.sizes and [PutForwards=value]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2011, Mounir Lamouri wrote:
> On 01/05/2011 02:29 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, Olli Pettay wrote:
> >>
> >> may I wonder why on earth any new API, like
> >> link.sizes uses PutForwards?
> >> IMHO, PutForwards should be limited to the
> >> awkward DOM0 APIs like window.location.
> > 
> > On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, Olli Pettay wrote:
> >>
> >> It makes getters and setters work in a very different way.
> >> Inconsistency in APIs isn't a good thing.
> > 
> > I don't understand how they work in a different way?
> > 
> > The idea is to make the attribute appear to work like a DOMString for most 
> > purposes, but to allow methods to be invoked on it. (All the attributes 
> > that have [PutForwards] set also have a stringifier on their object's 
> > interface.)
> 
> Is there a use case for [PutForwards] (except saving a few characters
> for the authors) that could justify the inconsistency?

I don't understand how it's inconsistent. Inconsistent with what?

The idea is to be consistent with all the other reflecting attributes, 
which can mostly all be treated as either strings or numbers. Contrast 
this with the way attributes are reflected in SVG, where there's a step of 
indirection to get to the string value due to the animation API. I think 
this is a case where [PutForwards] and stringification makes sense.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 2 May 2011 16:37:42 UTC