Invoking on stable configuration but sending on entry

Hey there,

as we continue to use SCXML for various applications, there is one deficiency that always bugged us. Consider that you have a state that will invoke something and you’d like to send some event to it right-away. You cannot use <send target=“#_invokeid”> in an onentry element as the invoker will not yet exist, it is only invoked when a stable configuration is reached (see procedure mainEventLoop in the draft). Thus forcing you to use a delay attribute.

<state id=“foo”>
  <invoke type=“something” id=“something” />
  <onentry>
    <!— this will fail as the invoker does not yet exist -->
    <send target=“#_something” event=“do.something” /> 

    <!— this will work as we had an empty internal queue -->
    <send target=“#_something” event=“do.something” delay=“1ms" /> 
  </onentry>
</state>

Is anyone else bugged by this behavior and resorted to the delayed send idiom, is there something more straight-forward or did we misinterpret the SCXML draft at some point?

If this is indeed correct behavior, maybe we could specify that an invoker *must* raise some internal event after being successfully invoked?

Best regards
Stefan