Days 29–31 of 100DaysOfSpec, 2.7 Common DOM Interfaces, contd.

I am reading and taking notes on the HTML specifications for 100 days as part of #The100DayProject. Read the initial intent/backstory. I am a Microsoft employee but all opinions, comments, etc on this site are my own. I do not speak on behalf of my employer, and thus no comments should be taken as representative of Microsoft's official opinion of the spec. Subsections not listed below were read without comment.

Since the past week has been super busy with travel, I'm catching up on a few days. Combining a couple into one post as I don't have much commentary on this algorithm-heavy section.

2.7.2 Collections

One thing that's sort of frustrating about the HTML spec with regards to how UAs should handle certain things, is that the document will say "x is a y", but never give a satisfactory definition of what "y" is. A "collection" is an example of this; it seems a bit arbitrary. It seems like this is not entirely accidental in this case...

2.7.4 Transferable objects

"Some objects support being copied and closed in one operation. This is called transferring the object, and is used in particular to transfer ownership of unsharable or expensive resources across worker boundaries."

^ Seems pretty chill to me (great technical insights I have here). One example they give has to do with arrays, and the other with messaging/communication between documents.

It appears that doing this "transferring" is a destructive process, like taking a sticker off a sheet and putting it on the cover of a notebook. I'm unsure of the scope of this destruction: whether the transferred object can only be used once on a page load or session or other small scope, or if that's forever-ever.