On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Adam Barth <w...@adambarth.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 1:31 AM, Jonas Sicking <jo...@sicking.cc> wrote: >> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:15 AM, Adam Barth <w...@adambarth.com> wrote: >>> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 11:19 PM, Jonas Sicking <jo...@sicking.cc> wrote: >>>> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 8:35 PM, Cameron McCormack <c...@mcc.id.au> wrote: >>>>> Adam Barth: >>>>>> > WebKit is looser in this regard. We probably should change the >>>>>> > default for new IDL, but it's a delicate task and I've been busy. :( >>>>> >>>>> What about for old IDL? Do you feel that you can make this change >>>>> without breaking sites? One of the “advantages” of specifying the >>>>> looser approach is that it’s further down the “race to the bottom” hill, >>>>> so if we are going to tend towards it eventually we may as well jump >>>>> there now. >>>> >>>> I can't remember getting a single bug filed on Geckos current >>>> behavior. There probably have been some which I've missed, but it's >>>> not a big enough problem that it's ever been discussed at mozilla as >>>> far as I can remember. >>> >>> Unfortunately, there's a bunch of WebKit-dominate content out there >>> that folks are afraid to break. We discussed this topic on some bug >>> (which I might be able to dig up). The consensus was that the value >>> in tightening this for old APIs wasn't worth the compat risk (e.g., in >>> mobile and in Mac applications such as Dashboard and Mail.app). >>> >>> For new APIs, of course, we can do the tighter things (which I agree >>> is more aesthetic). It mostly requires someone to go into the code >>> generator and make it the default (and then to special-case all the >>> existing APIs). I'd like to do that, but it's a big job that needs to >>> be done carefully and I've got other higher priority things to do, so >>> it hasn't happened yet. >> >> If there is agreement that new APIs should throw for omitted >> non-optional parameters, then it seems clear that WebIDL should use >> that behavior. >> >> That leaves the work for safari (and possibly other webkit devs) to go >> through and mark parameters as [optional] in their IDL. Possibly also >> filing bugs for cases where you want the relevant spec to actually >> make the argument optional. I realize that this is a large amount of >> work, but this is exactly what we have asked in particular of >> microsoft in the past which has been in a similar situation of large >> divergence from the DOM specs, and large bodies of existing content >> which potentially can depend on IE specific behavior. > > Think folks are agreed that's the path we should follow. My only > concern is that we don't have anyone signed up to do the work on the > WebKit side.
Just to update this thread, Mark Pilgrim has stepped forward to get the ball rolling on this work, so WebKit is making progress on this front. Thanks, Adam >> FWIW, I'd be happy to do the same to align Gecko behavior with specs >> when needed. For example I thought we were going to end up having to >> do that to make <null> coerce to "null" by default for DOMString >> arguments. It appears that in that case the WebIDL behavior changed to >> align with Gecko, which I think is unfortunate, and so it doesn't look >> like this change will have to happen (I used to argue otherwise in the >> past, but I've come around to the idea that aligning with JS behavior >> is more important, even when I'm not a fan of JS behavior).
