Re: Use of Futures/Promises in CSS Font Face APIs

Thanks. I know what futures/promises are and used them, along with
continuation passing, in Scheme and Lisp programming many years ago. I have
nothing against them as a mechanism for supporting asynchronous programming.

But unfortunately, your article doesn't answer the questions I posed, such
as "which version of ECMAScript will be required to obtain this features?"
ES5.1 (I think not); ES6 (I also don't think so); ES7 (maybe?).

If this is true, then CSS FontLoad and Events effectively becomes gated by
ES7 (or later). Since it appears that use of futures/promises actually
provides ZERO additional functionality to CSS FontLoad et al, this seems
like a very high price to pay (in terms of schedule and implementation
uncertainty) to incidentally endorse a useful, but new (future?) feature.

If this is an accurate description of the facts, then I expect that Cox
will register an objection to a FPWD and subsequent publishing steps that
relies up Futures/Promises. Cox believes it important to get this
functionality implemented and published in an expedient manner and that any
non-trivial delays in schedule caused by use of a future ES7 or later
feature will be detrimental to this goal.

Regards,
Glenn



On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Brian Kardell <bkardell@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Jun 7, 2013 9:37 AM, "Glenn Adams" <glenn@skynav.com> wrote:
> >
> > During today's presentation of an alternative API for CSS FontLoader,
> reference was made to so-called "Futures" or "Promises". I would like to
> know:
> >
> > (1) what material improvement is afforded to this alternative when
> compared with the existing (non-Futures) API proposal? that is, what new or
> different behavior or functionality is offered by using "Futures"?
> >
> > (2) where is the formal definition of a Futures API or functionality
> that would become a normative dependency were the "Futures" version of the
> FontLoader API adopted?
> >
> > (3) what other W3C APIs under active development (or complete) makes use
> of said "Futures" APIs?
> >
> > (4) does the proposed use of Futures create a dependency on a newer
> version of ECMAScript than is currently assumed by HTML (which is 5.1)?
> >
> > (5) what is the expected impact on schedule for reaching a FPWD (or LC)
> if this alternative "Futures" approach is followed?
>
> Some answers here http://infrequently.org/2013/06/sfuturepromiseg/
>