Re: Defining a constructor for Element and friends

On Jan 13, 2015, at 11:31 AM, Boris Zbarsky <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 1/13/15 1:33 PM, Ryosuke Niwa wrote:
>> Shouldn't we throw in this case because the concert type of "somename" is HTMLUnknownElement?
> 
> Oh, hmm.
> 
> Yes, I guess so.  That's very non-obvious to an author.
> 
> Even less obvious because for some tag names using the HTMLElement constructor is in fact correct.
> 
> The end result here is really something that ends up all self-consistent and preserving our invariants and the obvious reaction to it will be "WAT?".  Not least because the actual interface used by various HTML elements is pretty random.
> 
> Want a <basefont>?  HTMLElement.  Want a <bgsound>?  HTMLUnknownElement.  Want a <rb>?  HTMLUnknownElement.  Want a <big>?  HTMLElement…

Indeed the developer ergonomics here is terrible :(

>> I think if we threw an exception on every attempt to create an element with a name without "-" (as they're HTMLUnknownElement anyway)
> 
> I'm not sure I follow.  How do you propose an <s> be constructed via constructor, say?  What about <address>?

Sorry, I meant that only non-standard (i.e. unknown) HTML elements.  If we're disallowing upgrades as we've been arguing, then we should probably disallow HTMLUnknownElements altogether regardless of whether they contain "-" in their names or not.

- R. Niwa