*This is a call for help from the WEBRTC working group.
We are defining a new API (http://dev.w3.org/2011/webrtc/editor/webrtc.html) <about:blank>which has a number of cases where it needs to use arguments, or expose state variables, that can take only a limited set of values.

Feedback from the WebIDL community has been strongly in favour of using strings, possibly in the form of the newly added WebIDL "enum" construct", for these arguments. However, the developers we're targeting will also be using many other W3 APIs.

It seems that JavaScript APIs that deal with data flows in some form mostly use numeric constants, for instance, XMLHttpRequest, the Websocket API, HTMLTrackElement for timed text tracks, HTMLMediaElement for <audio> and <video>, various File APIs, the Indexed Database API, they all use "readyState" and it's always a numeric value.

So - we're interested in the advice of the community: What should we do? Be consistent, or be forward-looking?

A clear answer, if it exists, seems to be beyond the WEBRTC chairs.

         Harald and Stefan, for the WEBRTC WG

(note: we set public-script-co...@w3.org as the "reply-to" address on this mail, in order to avoid having a multi-mailing-list discussion. But the subject is concerning also for webapps and HTML, and possibly others, so we wanted to make sure they know we're asking. Feel free to share with others if you feel they need to be brought into the discussion.)

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