Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!newsfeed.freenet.ag!takemy.news.telefonica.de!telefonica.de!newsfeed.arcor.de!newsspool3.arcor-online.net!news.arcor.de.POSTED!not-for-mail Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Message-ID: <8192572.z9YG5XmbkK@PointedEars.de> From: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn Reply-To: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn Organization: PointedEars Software (PES) Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2012 04:46:41 +0100 User-Agent: KNode/4.4.11 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit X-Face: %i>XG-yXR'\"2P/C_aO%~;2o~?g0pPKmbOw^=NT`tprDEf++D.m7"}HW6.#=U:?2GGctkL,f89@H46O$ASoW&?s}.k+&. <1868da91-d142-49ee-8b09-27c0983c1af4@a2g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> Followup-To: comp.lang.javascript MIME-Version: 1.0 Lines: 65 NNTP-Posting-Date: 08 Dec 2012 04:46:43 CET NNTP-Posting-Host: 7f0f1b13.newsspool1.arcor-online.net X-Trace: DXC=]@h5SPZl@bgf1oJaJ0@dmgic==]BZ:afn4Fo<]lROoRankgeX?EC@@`gVYO=MmT0fjDZm8W4\YJNlR=i2=[N6Y6j_l6 On the other hand if Thomas will accept that not all people must be the > same as he and FAQ can include "advanced section" then everything should > be fine. The term “javascript” (or “Javascript”) is a misnomer, invented by people (or a single person) who do not know better or do not care about using an unambiguous term that promotes learning. The term is also inherently misleading, and it it is currently used misleadingly in the FAQ. Worse, the FAQ currently advertises it as being *the* term used for all "ECMAScript dialects", which is not only wishful thinking on part of its author(s), not substantiated by *any* solid reference, but also just more nonsense: This definition directly contradicts the section that follows, where the FAQ says correctly that “JScript is Microsoft's *implementation* of ECMAScript.” (Several regulars know that JavaScript was Netscape's, and is now Mozilla's implementation of ECMAScript, and that JavaScript and JScript differ is certain important respects. But the FAQ currently fails to mention that and the several other important implementations.) Because if anything, there are *implementations* of ECMAScript or, for short, ECMAScript implementations. These are the correct umbrella terms, and knowing them is helping to understand why the standard on which the programming languages are based and which is informed by them at the same time – the ECMAScript Language Specification –, is talking about what "a conforming implementation of ECMAScript" is supposed to be like. If you have ever asked yourself why “javascript” is working like it does, and why *seemingly* the same language works differently in a different environment (DOM issues aside), *there* is where you can find your correct answer *even though* there is implementation-dependent behavior and there are different DOM APIs on top of that. I do not intend to back off from that position because my research shows that to be the correct and a very useful approach (as several users of and contributors to the ECMAScript Support Matrix know). And I seriously doubt that anyone before me has investigated this matter thoroughly enough to make an informed statement about it. That said, I am well aware that it would be impractical to replace all occurrences of “javascript” with “ECMAScript implementations” in the FAQ. In fact, as the term “javascript” is used too broadly in the FAQ, a simple replacement would certainly result in a wrong description in some cases. I have neither the intention nor the inclination to do that; although undoubtedly correct in many cases, it would make the FAQ harder to maintain and to read. The solution I see to this problem at this point is very simple and I think very logical: Remove all those misleading, superfluous occurrences of “javascript” from the FAQ, and replace that with a *correct*, *unambiguous*, *well-defined* umbrella term *only if necessary for clarification*. This newsgroup and this FAQ is about a certain topic, which could be subsumed as "ECMAScript implementations (such as JavaScript and JScript) and their applications (such as DOMs)" (although the newsgroup is named differently, for *historical* as well as practical reasons), and unless a specific implementation needs to be mentioned or the ubiquity of a feature needs to be emphasized, no umbrella term needs to be used at all. PointedEars -- Sometimes, what you learn is wrong. If those wrong ideas are close to the root of the knowledge tree you build on a particular subject, pruning the bad branches can sometimes cause the whole tree to collapse. -- Mike Duffy in cljs,