ISSUE-43 - Public View

change to "common baseline"?

State:

CLOSED

Product:

XMLHttpRequest

Raised by:

Anne van Kesteren

Opened on:

2006-03-18

Description:

During our F2F in Oslo we agree upon some sort of common baseline for
XMLHttpRequest. This baseline was not entirely clear. In some situations we
agreed upon a solution when it worked in the majority of UAs and in some
situations we left it unspecified (or unspecified for a bit) because it didn't
work in some UAs (send() for example).

I suggest that we accept that UAs will not be conformant out of the box and that
we create some kind of authoring guidelines document that documents some of the
differences between the UAs we're testing in. The specification can than specify
what UAs MUST do instead of what they MAY do or SHOULD do now and change so in a
later version...

This does not mean that we should document more features, like the load and
error event. It does mean that the attribute onreadystatechange no longer
accepts an EventListener so that implementors know what the this keyword
references too (the event). Changing it from Function to EventListener in
version 2.0 would mean an backwards incompatible change and given that this
specification is likely implemented in SVG viewers etc. as well it is better
that there is a common baseline that is actually correct from the start.

So besides changing that back to EventListener the object that implements the
XMLHttpRequest interface also has to implement the EventTarget interface.

The idea behind this is that we _set_ a common baseline for implementors we can
work upon in the future and don't have to break. The authoring issues can either
be dealt with in an appendix or a separate authoring guidelines document.

Note: Some of these links may be accessible only to W3C Members.

Related emails:

1. ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from dean+cgi@w3.org on 2006-03-18)
2. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from jonas@sicking.cc on 2006-03-18)
3. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from robin.berjon@expway.fr on 2006-03-18)
4. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from derhoermi@gmx.net on 2006-03-18)
5. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from derhoermi@gmx.net on 2006-03-18)
6. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from jonas@sicking.cc on 2006-03-18)
7. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from annevk@opera.com on 2006-03-19)
8. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from jonas@sicking.cc on 2006-03-19)
9. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from jim@jibbering.com on 2006-03-19)
10. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from derhoermi@gmx.net on 2006-03-19)
11. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from jonas@sicking.cc on 2006-03-19)
12. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from annevk@opera.com on 2006-03-19)
13. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from jonas@sicking.cc on 2006-03-19)
14. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from derhoermi@gmx.net on 2006-03-20)
15. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from derhoermi@gmx.net on 2006-03-20)
16. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from ian.davis@talis.com on 2006-03-20)
17. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from annevk@opera.com on 2006-03-20)
18. Re: ISSUE-43: change to \\'common baseline\\'? (from derhoermi@gmx.net on 2006-03-20)
19. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from ian.davis@talis.com on 2006-03-20)
20. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from annevk@opera.com on 2006-03-20)
21. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from ian.davis@talis.com on 2006-03-20)
22. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from mjs@apple.com on 2006-03-20)
23. minutes 2006-03-20 (from chaals@opera.com on 2006-04-09)
24. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from annevk@opera.com on 2006-04-24)
25. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from jonas@sicking.cc on 2006-04-25)
26. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from annevk@opera.com on 2006-04-26)
27. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from mjs@apple.com on 2006-04-26)
28. Re: ISSUE-43: change to 'common baseline'? (from ian@hixie.ch on 2006-04-26)

Related notes: