[whatwg] Bluetooth devices

[Bjartur Thorlacius]

On 12/12/10, Anne van Kesteren <annevk at opera.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 22:53:47 +0100, Bjartur Thorlacius
> <svartman95 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 12/2/10, Diogo Resende <dresende at thinkdigital.pt> wrote:
>>> For example, a medical device may have no interest to the OS but a web
>>> app (just like a desktop app) could get some interesting information and
>>> perhaps send some instructions. Maybe some API like the geolocation..
>>
>> Wrong layering. HTML is for providing information, not deciding what
>> to do with it. Provide data, information, let UA gather and user use.
>
> What do you mean with this?
>
A medical device provides data. What does Bluetooth have to do with
anything? If the computer can reach the medical device and the medical
device can supply data this data might be fed to the app. The app has
no idea whatsoever whether this data is coming from a physical
health-o-meter, whether someone is comparing old and new results or
whether someone curious just wanted to input theoretical measures.

>>> I don't think Don was talking about mouse/kb/video/gps stuff. That
>>> should be handled by the OS and reflected to the current APIs as wired
>>> alternatives do. I think Don meant to be able to scan other types of
>>> devices and be able to interact with them.
>>>
>> What makes other devices so different that they need special exposition?
>
> They are far more common. We always try to optimize the common case.
>
I fail to grasp what giving direct access to networked devices achieves.
If you've got an application that takes a video stream at runtime,
request a video stream. If that video stream happens to be linked to
/dev/cam0, /usr/vid/funny/watchme, /n/screen or /n/fifo/record is
unimportant to the application. Read in the video, do your thing. Let
the user feed you video.
This can and should apply to _all_ media types. If you've written a
contact management application, you don't want to spend time
implementing Bluetooth stuff so you can import contacts from some
wireless handheld storage devices, just for the next app writer to do
the same.
If Bluetooth becomes obsolete, everything should work the same.
Whether you use SCSI, USB, FireWire, Light Peak or Bluetooth to get
data doesn't matter. You're still working with data.
I want my contact manager to manage my contacts, not my PAN.