Re: Web IDL Garden Hose

I meant "actually written". Being able to see actual code that implemented
pieces of the IDL in ES would make some of the more complex interactions
more obvious (I suspect).
-- Yehuda

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:28 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:

>
> On Sep 28, 2009, at 11:34 PM, Yehuda Katz wrote:
>
>  It would be pretty nice if the language bindings of WebIDL were
>> available in pure ES, where possible. To some degree, that is not
>> currently possible (in ES3), but it will be a lot better in ES5. I
>> think it might actually be possible to get a large degree of
>> completion just using the JavaScript available in Spidermonkey.
>>
>
> What do you mean by "available"? A lot of Web IDL interfaces are actually
> implementable in ES5 (at least the interface part - not necessarily the
> underlying functionality without relying on APIs outside the language).
> Using ES5 as the reference baseline would help make this more clear perhaps.
>
>  - Maciej
>
>
>
>> This might also be a useful step in the direction that I was hoping
>> for in some earlier postings.
>>
>> -- Yehuda
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 11:22 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 28, 2009, at 10:12 AM, Allen Wirfs-Brock wrote:
>>>
>>>  -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: es-discuss-bounces@mozilla.org [mailto:es-discuss-
>>>>> bounces@mozilla.org] On Behalf Of Robin Berjon
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There is no old version.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Right, this is v1. What previous W3C API specifications had relied on
>>>>> was either OMG IDL, or the common lore understanding that people were
>>>>> familiar with this way of expressing APIs, so they'd get it right.
>>>>> We're trying to do a bit better than that.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> The primary concern of TC39 members is with the WebIDL ECMAScript
>>>> bindings.  I haven't yet heard any particular concerns from TC9 about
>>>> WebIDL
>>>> as an abstract language independent interface specification language.
>>>> Since
>>>> W3C seems committed to defining language independent APIs, I would think
>>>> that the language independent portion of the WebIDL spec. would be the
>>>> only
>>>> possible blocker to other new specs.
>>>>
>>>> It seems like this might be a good reason to decouple the specification
>>>> of
>>>> the actual WebIDL language from the specification of any of its language
>>>> bindings.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Defining the Web IDL syntax without defining any language bindings would
>>> not
>>> be very useful:
>>>
>>> 1) The syntax is to a large extent designed around being able to express
>>> the
>>> right behavior for language bindings, particularly ECMAScript bindings.
>>> So
>>> we can't really lock it down without knowing that it can express the
>>> needed
>>> behavior in the bindings, which requires the bindings to be done.
>>>
>>> 2) To actually implement any spec using Web IDL, implementors need at
>>> least
>>> one language binding, and most implementors will consider an ECMAScript
>>> binding to be essential. Without the bindings being defined, it will not
>>> be
>>> possible to build sound test suites for the specs using Web IDL.
>>>
>>> 3) The whole point of Web IDL was to define how DOM and related Web APIs
>>> map
>>> to languages, and especially ECMAScript. Previous specs used OMG IDL
>>> where
>>> the mapping was not formally defined, and implementors had to read
>>> between
>>> the lines. Removing language bindings from Web IDL would return us to the
>>> same bad old state, thus missing the point of doing Web IDL in the first
>>> place.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Maciej
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> es-discuss mailing list
>>> es-discuss@mozilla.org
>>> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Yehuda Katz
>> Developer | Engine Yard
>> (ph) 718.877.1325
>>
>>
>


-- 
Yehuda Katz
Developer | Engine Yard
(ph) 718.877.1325