[whatwg] Low Memory Event

[Ryosuke Niwa]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Charles Pritchard <chuck at jumis.com> wrote:
>
> It's the same concept, a memory warning.
>
>  On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Charles Pritchard<chuck at jumis.com>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>> Here are some example implementations; it's up to the vendor, not the
>>> spec.
>>>
>>> Tabbed browsing implementation:
>>> Send a lowmemory event to hidden tabs listening (for lowmemory), that
>>> have
>>> not been visible for more than 60 seconds.
>>> (This is a partial example, as it doesn't detail when the tabs would be
>>> checked for visibility. )
>>>
>> An event like this needs to have a consistent meaning to allow
>> applications to respond meaningfully.  If it has varied meanings--or
>> if it has attributes to indicate each meaning, but they don't get
>> implemented in practice, or are too generic and don't accurately
>> describe the situation on each platform and configuration--then
>> applications can't respond correctly.
>>
> It has a consistent meaning, again, though, we're talking about whether
> it's a semantic meaning or a technical one.
>
> The technical meaning, "we can't allocate memory" isn't something that can
> be used on every platform, per Boris' comments.
> The semantic meaning is pretty straightforward: low memory warning.
>
> It's really up to the author to decide what they want to do with a low
> memory warning,
> and up to the vendor to decide if they want to send one out.
>
> Anything else seems to be impractical.


What I don't understand about this proposal is how web apps are supposed to
free memory.  In my understanding, ES5 doesn't allow you to manually free
memory (unlike Objective-C), and it's up to GC implementor to decide how and
when (most of) resources are freed.

- Ryosuke
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