[whatwg] Specs for window.atob() and window.btoa()

[Simon Pieters]

On Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:54:56 +0100, Aryeh Gregor  
<Simetrical+w3c at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Jorge <jorge at jorgechamorro.com> wrote:
>> On the other hand, it will be so forever
>
> Correct, it will be.
>
>> unless the spec says *not* to throw but to skip over instead, so that  
>> in a few years the cleanup can be ~safely skipped.
>
> Nope.  The spec isn't going to change browser behavior here if there
> are sites that depend on the current behavior -- and reportedly there
> are.

Is the compat problem for not throwing for whitespace or for not throwing  
for other garbage? If it's for other garbage, we could allow whitespace  
but throw for other garbage. (The bugs I can find in our database with a  
quick search is about non-ASCII characters not throwing.)


> There's just no incentive for browsers to change;

Better performance seems like an incentive.


> the proposed
> behavior isn't sufficiently superior to warrant even slight
> compatibility pain.  We can change web APIs in ways that might cause
> some compatibility pain if we have good reason, but for really minor
> things like this it's just not worth it.  Browsers can only afford to
> break a certain number of websites per release before users start to
> get annoyed, and we shouldn't be wasting it on things like this.
>
> (IMO as a non-implementer, anyway.  My opinion doesn't actually carry
> any weight here, though.  I'm just guessing what implementers will
> say.)


-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software