July 26 2016 Meeting Notes
Rick Waldron
waldron.rick at gmail.com
Fri Aug 5 17:16:39 UTC 2016
# July 26 2016 Meeting Notes
Brian Terlson (BT), Michael Ficarra (MF), Jordan Harband (JHD), Waldemar
Horwat (WH), Tim Disney (TD), Michael Saboff (MS), Eric Faust (FST), Chip
Morningstar (CM), Daniel Ehrenberg (DE), Leo Balter (LB), Yehuda Katz (YK),
Jafar Husain (JH), István Sebestyén (IS), John Neumann (JN), Domenic
Denicola (DD), Rick Waldron (RW), Stefan Penner (SP), Jonathan Sampson
(JS), Caridy Patiño (CP), Sam Tobin-Hochstadt (STH), John Buchanan (JB),
Kevin Gibbons (KG), Lars Hansen (LHN), Peter Jensen (PJ), Tom Care (TC),
Dave Herman (DH), Bradley Farias (BF), Kris Gray (KSG), Adam Klein (AK),
Dean Tribble (DT), Eric Faust (EFT), Jeff Morrison (JM), Sebastian Markbåge
(SM), Saam Barati (SB), Kris Gray (KGY), John-David Dalton (JDD), Ben
Newman (BN)
(I need the list when it's complete)
Template link:
https://github.com/tc39/Reflector/issues/19#issuecomment-234276510
## Introduction
JN: (agenda)
- https://github.com/tc39/agendas/blob/master/2016/07.md
IS: (wishes to determine a log.... I am not sure I understand what this
means... :-))
DE: We could go through the agenda and appoint reviewers for each topic
DD: I think we should appoint note-takers at the beginning of this meeting
YK: I think we should appoint note-takers as we start each topic
RW: If we have different note-takers, they might not follow the right
format, making my job of cleaning up the notes harder
DE: Let's defer to Brian when he gets back
IS: Different Ecma groups do different things; there is no single solution.
Some e.g. only record the subject and outcome of the discussion, but not
the actual discussion itself. This has to be decided by the TC. Anyway,
with the current practice, which is very similar what the W3C does, we need
the support of the group. e.g. Ecma can not hire any pay for a professional
technical notetaker, that has to be organized / fulfilled by TC39 members.
JN: Looks like some things are timeboxed
BT: Does anyone want to volunteer to take notes the whole day?
RW: Me
AWB: (punt on addressing this now?)
BT: Let's go with Rick taking notes for now, since he volunteered, but
long-term we'll go item by item
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Moving on, further discussion to be on github as before this meeting.
Interested members are encouraged to participate there directly.
## 3 Agenda Adoption
- Approved
## 4 May Minutes Approval
-Approved
JN: Agenda?
(Discussion re: backing documents not present for a handful of agenda
items, should we start requiring these?)
WH: I'm fine with occasional items not having backing materials — there are
situations where that's appropriate — as long as they're relatively rare
and not looking to advance.
WH: ECMA has a global policy (we all agreed to) that documents up for
significant decisions shall be provided 2-3 weeks in advance. I'd interpret
this as applying to proposals looking to advance in TC39.
IS: It's 3 weeks. This is e.g. to formally move forward or approve a TC39
draft speciafication. But for things for information, to start a discussion
on new items, not to strive for a formal decision anything until the
meeting is allowed. But of course it is encouraged to submit and post on
Github as soon as possible.
JN: Approval of minutes?
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Agenda Adopted
- May Minutes approved
- Add item to discuss the agenda item locking.
## 5. Report from the Ecma Secretariat
IS: Submitted the ECMAScript Suite Standard (approved by the GA as Ecma
414) to ISO/IEC JTC1 for fast-track. This should enable not to submit
anymore ECMA-262 and ECMA-402, etc. to JTC1 separately anymore. This would
allow to solve the speed difference problem and the RF patent policy
problem. However, JTC1 editors wanted to have more text in the standard and
not only the list of normative and informative references. IS said that he
will work with Allen Wirfs-Brock on that. If possible we try to beed up
ECMA-414 until the September 2016 meeting that isót can be approved as new
Edition in the Decemmber 2016 GA. If the plan is delayed we finish it by
June 2017.
- Link IETF spec to Ecma 404 (that was already fast tracked to ISO actually
before the May 2016 TC39 meeting). On that one JTC1 has not given any
feedback yet. So we guess that is on track.
- On the issue we are in close contacts with the IETF. When we get the IETF
spec number (when available) we will make a 2nd Edition of ECMA-404 and
fast track that edition to JTC1. With that we want to link the Ecma
Standrad with the IETF specification that they should be in full harmony.
- Awards: BT and RW received ECMA awards for ECMA-262 7 th Edition and
ECMA-402 (plus the many notetaking). Congratulations!
- New Executive Committee, made from a combination of ECMA management and
the former Coordinating Committee.
- A change from the past is that up to two ECMA members from categories
other than ordinary members may now be elected into the the Executive
Committee. Nominations for that can come from anybody, but in the end the
December GA will vote on the nominations. The membership in the Executive
comiittee is always one year, but with the possibility of reelection.
- All members can now participate in the General Assembly and take
actively part in the discussions, not just ordinary members. However, only
ordinary members can vote (that is unchanged).
-IS also noted that TC39 is now by far the largest Ecma Group and it has
grown to a size where he feels that we have to organize our structure and
work better, otherwise at the face-to-face meetings there might be
disappointment by some who prepare for a topic for discussion and
presentation but in the shortness of time the subject is not discussed
properly. Discussion on that to be continued by those who are interested on
GitHub.
- What IS forgot to tell, that actually with the publication of
ECMAScript 2016 and ECMA-402 new Edition etc. it would be a good idea to
make more PR, e.g. Press Release.
## 8. Test 262 Status Update
IS: Technical Report 104 needs to be updated. He added that all specs
related to TC39 work are being downloaded very heavily (actually at least
2/3 of all Ecma downloads are TC39 related). The HTML version of ECMA-262
and ECMA-402 is in addition to it, and compared to full downloads that is
even significantly higher.This is actually more than e.g. what is being
downloaded from the ISO Shop (of course that is not free of charge...). So
automativally also TR-104 gets downloaded rather heavily. But e.g. in
TR/104 the URL to the tests does not work. Also the text needs to be
updated. It reflects a situation when only ES5 was covered, but e.g. not
ECMA-402.
AWB: Propose updating TR 104 to be descriptive only?
BT: Is this just a readme? Possible get rid of it?
AWB: Just reduce to an abstract description of the content and motivation
of test262
DE: Should ecma site link to draft spec?
AWB: The draft isn't the published standard
(Suggestions to link both, with clear identifiers)
Note IS: I did not say that in the meeting, but In case of TC39 actually we
give links to the latest ECMAScript drafts.
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Bring to reflector for further discussion
- TR104 update (or withdrawal)
- Linking standard and draft?
- It's there, but some want it to be more prominent
Note IS: The TC39 website pages at Ecma have always room for improvement.
If anything you want to include just contact Patrick from the Secretariat
who maintains the webpages.
## 6. Ecma 262 Status Update
Brian Terlson
BT: 6 months left for ES2017
- Object.values
- Object.entries
- String.prototype.padStart
- String.prototype.padEnd
- RegExp changes to case insensitive flags (
https://github.com/tc39/ecma262/pull/525)
AWB: (questions about consolidated changelog that provides complete
document of changes from previous edition to present edition)
YK: Make a single place for all published changlogs?
BT: There has never been such a document, isn't Annex B's change listing
sufficient?
- Want changelogs in annex?
AWB: Yes
DD: Use links instead of copy/paste?
BT: Links to releases tab?
AWB: Cannot stand alone without github
BT: (has a plan)
...
AWB: Do we have a "focus on 2017 items list"?
BT: No, not yet.
JHD: Benefit of knowing what year a thing will be ready?
BT: Addressing the cross cutting issues, knowing the big picture
AWB: Resolving issues discovered in an implementation
BT: Champions responsible
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Bring to reflector for further discussion
- Need changelog for each edition
- Discuss form/forum/format
## 7. Ecma 402 Status Update
Caridy Patiño
No updates
## 8. Test262 Update Revisit
Leo Balter
LB: Bocoup has just wrapped project delivering coverage for ES2015
- Iterating on feedback from other members
- Moving forward on ES2016 tests
- More work to be done, but need volunteers
- Deprecated Python runner
- Working on test262 harness that runs from node.js
DE: Work to be done on test262 presence
- Spoke with Kangax about including test262 in the compat table sites
LB: More visibility for test262
TC: Need help with reviewing contributions
- Promises
- Yield
TC: Barrier to entry quite lower based on the work that's been done in the
last year.
SP: (asking about test submission with new features)
BT: Staged features require tests. Known issue: normative changes haven't
been blocked by any requirement for tests
RW: Previously, not a lot of contribution, so this wasn't an issue. Now
we're seeing more contribution, so it needs to be addressed (this is a
concern that we have at Bocoup)
BT: Possibly a requirement to create an issue on test262?
SP: Block merge?
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Labels to mark normative changes that need tests
- Work with change author to make tests
- Block on normative changes until they have tests
- Due diligence on both the tests and normative spec changes
- Authors, champions, leads must be satisfied with changes on both
repositories
- Include mention of available mentorship for test writing.
## 9.i.a Reintroduce for-in-initializer
Kevin Gibbons
Slides:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19LVVdCHfokJWQnNvkyu8M2vdpMAz8yIE1wB8yK7hLB4/edit#slide=id.gc6f980f91_0_0Slides
:
KG: V8, SM, JSC implemented and later reverted. Chakra did not implement
- Web breakage happens!
Proposing changes to Annex B
AWB: Annex B are generally items not allowed in strict mode
KG: Not consistent
YK: Can we make illegal in strict mode?
KG: Chrome does
?: JSC does too
AWB, WH: So we should add for-var-in initializers with the old semantics to
Annex B, for non-strict mode only.
RW: (brief discussion about strict mode additions: resolved, non-issue)
YK: Does this mean sloppy mode changes are always in annex b?
Generally, no.
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Add for-var-in initializers with the old semantics to Annex B, for
non-strict mode only.
- ecma262/pull/614
- Kevin will write tests for the change, based on the new policy
## 9.i.b Update on Async Iteration
Domenic Denicola
(No slides)
DD: Kevin Smith has left the committee; I am taking over as champion. I did
not have time to address spec issues, so it is not ready to advance, but
they are minor and I will work on it. Who should be Stage 3 reviewers?
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Reviewers: Bradley Farias, Daniel Ehrenberg
AWB: Going back to the previous topic, Kevin, could you please share a PDF
on the notes page, since links rot?
## 9.i.e Trailing commas in functions
Jeff Morrison
JM: It's implemented in two browsers (JSC, Edge)
AK: Actually V8 also
BT: Actually we ship it already. Are there test262 tests?
JM: I thought so. Stage 4?
WH: I don't object to advancing this to stage 4, but I'm sad to see this in
the language.
?: Ditto.
(We can't find tests)
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Stage 4 pending on writing and merging test262 tests
## 9.i.f Unify String and Array maximum lengths
Michael Saboff
MS: Unify the length of strings and arrays. Strings are 2^53-1, Arrays are
2^32-1 indexed elements. A few APIs cross over. Really, browsers are all
2^31 or less. I don't care which way we go, but I'd like Strings and Arrays
to be unified. Maybe we should delay this a little until we figure out how
to make Arrays bigger; I originally proposed reducing everything to 2^32-1
MF: What's the motivation?
MS: Consistency, so they all use the same type of index.
AWB: There was a lot of thought that went into it. We increased the size of
everything that we could — strings, typed arrays — and held off on Arrays
for compatibility reasons.
DD: As Michael was saying, in current VMs this isn't a good idea, but maybe
in a few years, it could be reasonable.
AWB: And Arrays can be sparse anyway
YK: Seems like a bad idea. Use Maps here instead for spare Arrays, or
TypedArrays for big Strings or Arrays. We have TextDecoder in the DOM to
deal with TypedArrays that have encoded Strings.
DD: Why not even lower?
AWB: We use 2^53 for basically everything, except for Array length
calculation, which maxes out at 2^32-1
DD: It seems like bigger would be better
DE: What was the web compatibility evidence presented in the past?
BE: The motivation [of increasing it] was weak, and no one wanted to jump
on the hand grenade.
AWB: Well, we have a motivated implementer here. Maybe Michael should try
it out.
MS: I don't think any browser believes we need more than 2^32 for browsers.
However, for servers, it could be an important limit to hit. I don't think
this is important for JSC as we are just a browser implementation.
AWB: There's a chicken and egg problem. Someone has to prove the
feasibility of it, and you're the only major implementation who has brought
it up as a possibility.
MS: My proposal was to make string lengths smaller.
AWB: We don't want to make string lengths smaller
DD: It would be nice if everything were as big as it could possibly be, but
I don't have a problem with making it smaller
AWB: The max size is implementation-dependent
YK: It seems OK to just choose the lowest common denominator size
BF: It seems like large Arrays or Strings are important for some
applications
YK: We can just make those things use TypedArrays. Wouldn't you want to use
binary data for such big things?
WH: We'd need to shrink TypedArrays too if we're shrinking strings;
otherwise we wouldn't get the consistency that's the whole motivation of
this.
EF: If we don't shrink TypedArrays, we wouldn't get a level paying field.
AK: What is the motivation for this change, given that JSC already limits
strings to 2^31?
MS: It's consistency. In regular expressions, for split, we have to do
these 53-bit calculations, but really strings are smaller
AWB: For split, we made a change to use ToUint32 rather than ToLength, but
we should've made it throw
AK: that's a separate proposal
AWB: It's gotten worse with recent changes
DE: We've hit the timebox limit; Add this to the end of the agenda?
MS: This isn't a hill for me to die on; i think it's something we should
address, but not my #1 priority
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Not finished; will revisit
## 9.i.h Standardize Date.UTC when called with < 2 arguments
Brian Terlson
BT: All implementations except Edge return NaN for Date.UTC for < 2
arguments, but Edge treats those missing arguments as 0.
AWB: What discussion have we had before?
BT: I couldn't find it. As Chakra is the only holdout, and we have no
compelling reason, we're willing to return NaN. So I believe we should
update the spec text and return NaN, and Chakra will do that.
DT: Is this part of a more general principle?
DD: Actually the spec had a specific cop-out there
BT: OK, consensus on the change?
AK: Are there test262 tests?
BT: I'll write them! But I'll merge the Chakra PR first
AWB: Why not actually make them optional like Chakra does? Maybe those are
good semantics.
YK: We're just standardizing what's there in browsers
DD: Does anyone want to experiment?
BT: We're shipping this already. I'm concerned about interoperability.
YK: NaN is horrible and we should avoid letting it leak out into programs.
DE: We can't generally be in the business of making bad arguments to things
return useful values. Date uses NaN all over the place as a way to stand in
for something having gone wrong. The Date library is horrible and legacy;
our job should be to standardize what's there. The Date.parse presentation
will show a significantly worse case than this, but we should standardize
it anyway. Given that we have three browsers agreeing, we should just
standardize that. I would be OK with standardizing the other behavior.
WH: We shouldn't create a second Date library just to fix this, we should
make this one good.
WH: UTC(year) should return the first day of that year, just like UTC(year,
month) returns the first day of that month. We know that works because
Chakra does it.
AWB: Oh, I see what's going on. This fills in a missing case from the Date
overload. Date does something completely different when passed one argument
than when it gets two.
BT: Let's pick one of the two existing semantics, not something in between.
Oh, wait, it's actually December 31, 1899
DD: that's two-digit year 0, timezone-shifted
DE: Sounds like Chakra's semantics are significantly bad
BT: Let's standardize returning NaN now, and we could revisit it later.
DE: Returning NaN is sorta like throwing an exception, so we could make it
return a useful value later.
DE: We are running into the timebox. Do we have consensus on the PR?
WH: No. I think that, barring additional evidence, it would be good for the
one-argument case to return the beginning of the year. I'm fine with NaN
for the zero-argument case.
AK: What would be the use case for this? is it worth it to ask
implementations to make this change? We're making a normative change; there
should be some reasonable motivation.
BT: It's a grand compromise
AWB: 1) Interoperability among implementations 2) Usability going
forward--what would users expect? This is forward-looking, not
backwards-looking.
BT: That seems like a reasonable rational. Are other implementers reluctant
to return a useful value for that case?
AK: My point is a little higher-level, that if we are making normative
changes, we should have a motivation for it.
AWB: Good design aesthetics would be to revisit what things are, rather
than just polling implementations
AK: This is adding to the incompatibility for the future and churn.
BE: It is what it was. I support the status quo, copying Java, returning NaN
MS: I support returning NaN for less than two arguments, just because of
the confusion that Date has 0 arguments, 1 arguments, and then 2 or more is
just like Date.UTC
AWB: The Date constructor has an overload for one argument, so it can't
treat that as the year and be analogous to Date.UTC for the one-argument
case.
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- No consensus on the full change. The zero-argument change is agreed to
return NaN, but disagreement about what the one-argument case
## 9.i.d Revisiting NaN
Daniel Ehrenberg
https://github.com/tc39/ecma262/issues/635
Slides:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eqimbmVpMZET_5H9NacVkXGP2WNATg8bXWi3Ky2bsGo/edit
DE: (presenting slides)
- Some implementations fit pointers in NaN payloads, so canonicalize
- V8 does not do NaN tagging, so pointers are 32-bits on 32-bit archs
- Extra canonicalization writing into a TypedArray is a perf regression
(see slide for link)
Slide: "What does ES2015 day about NaN?"
- The Number Type
"to ECMAScript code, all NaN values are indistinguishable from each other"
- SetValueInBuffer( arrayBuffer, byteIndex, type, value [ , isLittleEndian
] )
"An implementation must always choose the same encoding for each
implementation distinguishable NaN value."
DE: ok with: "anytime you use SetValueInBuffer, use whatever you have"
"Why would property writes make a new NaN?"
SetValueInBuffer ( arrayBuffer, byteIndex, type, value [ , isLittleEndian ]
)
- V8's FAST_HOLEY_DOUBLE_ARRAY ElementsKind
- Sample code:
```js
let x = new Array(6)
for (let i = 0; i < x.length; i++) x[i] = 0.5
```
- Initially "filled with holes" (missing properties), then entries are
added
V8 canonicalizes NaNs when setting elements into such an array so it can
have a distinct "hole" NaN value
WH: This is an instance of the general problem that implementations will
sometimes do NaN-boxing and sometimes not within the same program,
depending on code and data structure optimizations.
DH: Easiest solution: maximally non-deterministic: allowed to
non-deterministically change bit pattern
Problem: many places possible to predict the bit pattern. Can convey
information, want to preserve that preciseness.
MM: Uncontrolled non-determinism of NaN bit pattern, depends on unspecified
nullable
(discussion re: intentionally evil implementations)
WH: My view is that what NaN bit pattern you get should be unspecified. I
understand MM's concern and wouldn't want them to be evilly unspecified,
although I'm not sure if there is a reasonable way of expressing that.
* timebox ran out, discussion continued *
DH: expectations:
- want implementation flexibility, use cases for changing bit patterns
- frozen properties, should not be able to reliably observe changes
DH:
- NaNs carry around bit pattern,
- specific places can scramble
- specific places preserve
EFT: Over the time box, no new points made
MM: Don't understand the optimization in V8
AK: I think this needs to be discuss offline?
DH: (taking issue with time box)
DH: Some predictable behavior that has changed over the years and some
implementations are doing different things, new use cases.
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Allen, Mark, Dave, Waldemar, Dan to have discussion and come back for
another time box discussion.
(More discussion re: time box)
## 9.ii.a Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors: when a Proxy returns an
undefined descriptor?
Jordan Harband
JHD: Any non-proxy, call built-in op claims foo in object, call
Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(foo, "prop"), you get that property
descriptor. Proxy can lie, which is problematic when passing the returned
value from `Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors(...)`
BT: Side-effecting proxies. If a proxy says "no descriptor for this
property", then there is none. Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors(...)
shouldn't be seen as the authority.
- Property should be skipped on the grounds that "it doesn't exist"
MM: once an obj is not observable, ownkeys cannot give an answer that was
not previously true
DE: Cait Potter implemented both semantics and there are no noticeable
differences.
AWB: No guarantee once you get a descriptor that it remains valid to do
something with it in the future - operations are unknown
JHD: The change is: only properties with valid property descriptors are
returned.
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Recommended change approved for merging the PR
AWB: obligated to notify implementors?
JHD: Implementors are aware and following progress
## 9.ii.b Object.enumerable{Keys,Values,Entries}
Leo Balter & John-David Dalton
LB: Discussing https://github.com/leobalter/object-enumerables
JDD: No built-in API that allows getting own and inherited properties
EFT/DD: for loop?
JDD: Want built-in functionality, not syntax
DH: Something more?
JDD: Allows a shim path.
DH: An example?
JDD: (showing an example in lodash)
STH: Can't the shim write the for in loop?
DD: Spec seems to treat objects as maps, but specifically objects and their
prototype properties as values in the map
JDD: (further examples, showing:
https://github.com/leobalter/object-enumerables#use-cases )
DH: Not impossible to write in library code?
JDD: no, but not the point
STH: Offers shim authors something to coordinate on to fix bugs in older
browsers, but not sure we should be in the business of doing so.
YK: It's rare to encounter an enumerable property on the prototype, it
happens
- If there _are_ properties on a class prototype that are enumerable
AWB: Effectively creating for-in
YK: Yes
DD: Do we want to further encourage the programming model that these
encourage?
MM: (concurring, discussing value of such a feature)
DH: A number of libraries want to use this functionality and it would be
nice expose as built-in, but why not define in one library and that's that.
AWB: Back to "inherited, enumerable things". The only definition we have is
via for-in
DH: can also crawl the prototype chain
AWB: then have to impose your own rules re: side effects
BE: for-in is bad legacy
"Never invest in the trailing edge"
DD: Adding new features, in new browsers, to fix features in old browsers,
is not what we should be doing.
MM: I don't think this is going to get consensus
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- No advance
## 9.ii.c RegExp Unicode Property Escapes
Brian Terlson, Daniel Ehrenberg, Mathias Bynens
https://github.com/mathiasbynens/es-regex-unicode-property-escapes
Slides:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1o31S9RqDdkoWW2zfPMNIZdPDIp25Rr0-XW0gro_cskk/edit
DE: Expose more unicode data to RegExps
- Properties with values:
/\p{UnicodePropertyName=UnicodePropertyValue}/
- Binary properties:
/\p{LoneUnicodePropertyNameOrValue}/
Inverse:
- \P
Example:
https://i.gyazo.com/0dcfc195d891a36c4b0c04d460cb5d72.png
In text form:
https://github.com/mathiasbynens/es-regexp-unicode-property-escapes#illustrative-examples
DE: Have full spec text, implementation in V8, tests for V8 (need to be
updated for test262)
BT: If ok with deviating from what’s allowed inside \u, then we can
overload \u instead of \p
(TODO: @rick we'll likely have to escape those ^^^^^ when this is published
as markdown)
DD: Are there conflicts with other languages and use of \u?
WH: \u could be trouble if anyone comes up with classname consisting
entirely of characters A-F
DE: I can find out if this is an invariant that will be maintained. If it
is, then we should use \u, otherwise \p. If Unicode advises us _not_ to
depend on existing \u invariants, then we won't
DE: Stage 2?
MF: Is there a syntax error when type any random character where in
/\p{UnicodePropertyName=UnicodePropertyValue}/,
/\p{LoneUnicodePropertyNameOrValue}/ ?
DE: No UnicodePropertyName syntactic restrictions in present spec
Addendum by Mathias: a SyntaxError is thrown at runtime in such cases. But
yeah, maybe these should trigger early errors instead? No strong opinion
here.
AWB: Need to specify the syntax
WH: If we choose to use \u{}, then we must make unknown classes (or typos)
into early errors because we need typos in hex numbers to be early errors.
With \p{} we'd have a choice of standardizing on early or runtime errors.
Revisiting String.prototype.normalize specification.
This may need to be "normative optional"? Inclusion of new data tables may
be problematic?
Discussion re: ICU data, Unicode data on constrained devices.
RW: When Tessel 2 moves to Node 6, we'll be shipping Node.js compiled with
the disable flags, which means normalize is useless, but the additional
data isn't included.
AWB: Can define it such that, if the data is not available, the character
set is empty
DE: Stage 1?
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Stage 1: Approved.
- YK wants confirmation about \u
## 9.ii.d Async Functions for Stage 4
Brian Terlson
BT: no updates, no changes
- Shipping in Edge
- Implementations in V8 and SpiderMonkey
YK: Worried about cancellation?
DD: Cancel token integrate well with async functions
YK: Not at stage 2 with cancellation, hard to be sure that it's compatible
KG: not sure it could change, given widepsread use in transpilation
YK: (concerns with cancellation intuition)
DE: the correct time for this was prior to stage 3
YK: I made these objections then
DE: I'm pretty optimistic about Domenic's cancellation specification
DD: If I had held off on Cancel tokens, this would've made it to stage 4
BT: Off topic.
YK: Certain assumption that one can reasonably assume that an expression
that exist can become abrupt
- Have to know that X cannot throw
- Cancellation exists, now X might throw
WH: I'm trying to understand the concerns here. Should this proposal be
blocked on the cancellation proposal advancing a few levels?
WH: I hear vague uneasiness about interactions between async functions and
cancellations, but need something more concrete to be able to judge the
merits.
BT: willing to postpone this until we know more about interaction with
cancellation
SP: Can we revisit this after cancellation?
(Discussion, re: some people that object, that are apparently in the room,
but aren't speaking)
MM: concerns: === should never throw, typeof should never throw. I don't
recall where cancellation would make await throw, where it previously would
not throw.
Was
DD:
```js
async function foo() {
try {
await f();
g();
} catch (e) {
h();
}
}
```
might call neither g nor h. But then there are other situations where
neither g nor h is called. Use `finally` if you want cleanup code.
DD: Objecting to the third
JHD: If `f` is changed to return `new Promise(() => {})`, then both `g` and
`h` will never run now, without cancellation existing - therefore if you
expect `g` or `h` to always run, you are simply wrong, and your expectation
is invalid.
```js
async function foo() {
try {
await f();
g();
} catch (e) {
h();
}
i();
}
```
DD: however, currently you can guarantee that either `g` or `h` will always
run before `i`, and it's possible with cancellation that this might not
hold.
MM: the example here has nothing to do with something that was not abrupt,
becoming abrupt
- A new way to be abrupt, in addition to the old way to be abrupt
DH: If from scratch, no issue. The issue is that catch expectations no
longer valid.
DD: There is past precedent for moving ahead. We introduced proxies, which
created objects that behaved outside the past invariants that code might
have relied on. We introduced new typeof types with similar effect.
JHD/EFT: No call site can be defensive against code it didn't write
JHD: In the case of Promises, if you're returning a promise that you didn't
create, in a `then`, you can't defend against it, because you can't know if
the other promise will ever settle.
(Questions about "Third State")
#### Conclusion/Resolution
Will revisit after discussing cancels more; hopefully reshuffle
non-timeboxed agenda items to enable that to happen in this meeting.
## 9.ii.e Math extensions
Rick Waldron
RW: There are some nasty npm modules for these sorts of math functions.
This comes up in IoT, cool animations, etc. We could add some more
functions to the standard library. This stuff happens over and over and
over again; typing things into consoles.
YK: leftPad went well
RW: This falls into the leftPad box. This is putting down pavement where a
cowpath once was.
RW: Math.constrain: Could be called Math.clamp. Like Uint8ClampedArray.
Very straightforward.
RW: Math.map is just scaling x from one range to another
YK: scale is better than map
RW: Scale is my favorite actually; I didn't want to seem biased. fmap is
the version where the result is converted to a float32.
DD: Looks like it'll move x to the corresponding point in the 'out' linear
range as it was in the 'in' range.
RW: Yes
DD: Why not just use fround composed with it? Is there a hardware operation
for this?
RW: No; we can take this or leave it
AWB: Since we're doing multiplies, the fround won't end up commuting with
the operations, so this won't get those efficiency advantages. This is
specified to do double precision scaling. This is just a nice-to-have.
DH: is every one on the list something that you found in other languages?
RW: Yes, the readme has links to standard library features analogous to
these in tons of other languages.
MM: Shouldn't these be in a new built-in module?
RW: I'd love to do that. If between now and 2017 lockout day, I will change
the writing for that.
DH: Part of your motivation is that it's trivially accessible from the
console, and you can't import from the console.
RW: If it's a built-in standard lib module
DH: From the console, that extra line is a pain, and further, I can't see
why we should be inconsistent with the other Math functions that exist.
Seems silly to be out of sync with each other.
DT: Built-in modules just in the console?
MM: Seems like adding functions for radians and degrees when they are so
trivial is just a waste of time.
DD: I don't feel so strongly about this, but taking conversions for
different unit systems takes Math in a totally different direction.
RW: If you look at other languages, they include these conversions for
radians/degrees and not other things
STH: And degrees are unitless
DD: They are not natural
CM: But degrees are widespread as a notation
DH: There's a high bar for adding something to the JavaScript standard
library, given that our library is rather more limited. We do want to add
things that are common enough.
RW: And it's painful to install someone's bad npm library
DH: We make these generic arguments about the benefits of standardizing
functions, but we can't standardize all functions in npm. The argument
should be, we know what the costs are, we know that we can't do it for
everything, so we have to make the argument that these are extraordinarily
common for important use cases.
STH: Two other reasons why these functions have a strong claim: Unlike
other domains, JavaScript has as reasonably strong Math standard library,
for historical reasons, and so programmers expect Math.whatever to be the
math standard library in a way that they don't expect for Strings or TCP
connections. Second, these are things that are commonly in the standard
library of other languages. Yet again, programmers expect, when they look
for functions like the ones Rick is proposing, where their counterparts are
in other languages.
DD: I agree with these points, but maybe we should group these under
"Units" and include time constants, also RAD PER_DEG not "TO"
YK: I agree that time conversions are very common.
RW: I'm asking for stage 1.
JHD: Do we expect to devote time to the problem space?
RW: Single-precision values are important because some datasheets ask for
things to a certain precision. You want the rounding to happen in your own
code, not implicitly when writing it into the actual register. But really,
Math.fmap is not all that important.
WH: I was wondering why we have fmap but not fmax, etc. What does this
actually do?
RW: It maps a range
YK: We are interested in this subject; in stage 1 we can look into unit
conversions generally
DD: I feel really strongly that it shouldn't be in Math
JHD: We don't have to come to all of these answers in order to get to Stage
1.
RW: As part of Stage 1, I will document why these should go within Math
MF: I want to define a selection criteria for math functions. This seems
like a random bag.
RW: I used subjective criteria, for what is the most painful in my everyday
programming
DH: Some possible selection criteria: 1) Incredibly high applicability 2)
known hardware fastpaths
DE: Or known VM fastpaths, like Object.values
DH: Neither of those has anything to do with whether it's in Math. Domenic
makes a good point that some of these don't belong in Math.
WH: I would have expected math library extensions to include common math
functions like the gamma function. Why aren't those in here?
RW: That was my long list, but I pared it down. Maybe we should be incuding
a lot of functions from other standard libraries.
AWB: We went through a similar process in ES2015 where we made a big
spreadsheet of various languages and functions, and chose what to add to
Math based on that
RW: How about looking at Racket and Python
MF: We should look at rather broad datasources, like utility libraries for
JS today, a number of different programming languages, etc
DH: We should avoid the slippery slope that, if we do one thing, we do all
the things. We should have a high bar
DD: We shouldn't tell the champion that they need to add more than they
want; they should be able to put in what they value
AWB: Seems like this request is a valid input.
RW: This is really robotics-driven
WH: Last time, we got bogged down in specifying precision of math
functions. How should we avoid that here?
CM: If there are subtleties in the implementation, that's a good reason for
standards.
#### Conclusion/Resolution
- Stage 1
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