ISSUE-170: Consider not deprecating DOMActivate

DOMActivate deprecation

Consider not deprecating DOMActivate

State:

CLOSED

Product:

HISTORICAL: DOM3 Events [All Bugs and Issues use Bugzilla: http://tinyurl.com/Bugs-DOM3Events]

Raised by:

Doug Schepers

Opened on:

2010-10-20

Description:

Steven Pemberton <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/2010OctDec/0068.html>:
[[
In section
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#event-type-DOMActivate
it says

"Warning! The DOMActivate event type is defined in this specification for
reference and completeness, but this specification deprecates the use of
this event type in favor of the related event type click. Other
specifications may define and maintain their own DOMActivate event type
for backwards compatibility."

This is the wrong approach, and should not be done.

In the decade since DOMActivate was introduced markup languages have
adopted DOMActivate as the 'proper' abstract device-independent version of
activation, and it has been widely implemented, and adopted in documents.

Having to rename all uses of DOMActivate will involve a lot of editing, a
lot of re-educating and a lot of re-tooling.

The advantage of a centrally standardised DOMActivate is that it is
interoperable and works cross-namespace having the same semantics
everywhere. If each namespace has to define its own DOMActivate, making
generic markup that will work across namespaces will be hard-to-impossible.

Another problem is that if true hardware events, like click, get mixed up
with the abstract events like DOMActivate, then it will be harder to
differentiate between hardware events when you need them, and abstract
events when you don't.

As Apple's resent proposal to W3C[1], discussed on the Hypertext
Coordination Group, the correct way to process events is to process the
hardware events when you need to, and to use the abstract events when you
can.

Deprecating DOMActivate is going in the opposite direction, is a
retrograde step, and should not happen.
]]

Related Actions Items:

No related actions

Related emails:

1. Re: DOM3 Events last call comment [ISSUE-170] (from schepers@w3.org on 2010-10-21)
2. Re: DOM3 Events last call comment (from dhtmlkitchen@gmail.com on 2010-10-20)
3. Minutes: DOM3 Events Telcon, 20 October 2010 (from schepers@w3.org on 2010-10-20)
4. ISSUE-170 (DOMActivate deprecation): Consider not deprecating DOMActivate [DOM3 Events] (from sysbot+tracker@w3.org on 2010-10-20)

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