[whatwg] Feedback on UndoManager spec

[Jonas Sicking]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Ojan Vafai <ojan at chromium.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Aryeh Gregor <ayg at aryeh.name> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
>>
>> > The same is true for having apply and reapply. Jonas wanted to get rid
>> > of
>> > reapply altogether and just have
>> > void apply(in boolean isReapply)
>> > In this world, you could do
>> > { apply: function(isReapply) { return isReapply ? this.doApply() :
>> > this.doReapply(); } }.
>> > I didn't want this API because I'd expect apply and reapply to be
>> > substantially different.
>>
>> I think either one of those two APIs would be fine.  I don't think the
>> compromise is good, because it gives authors two ways to do the same
>> thing, which is confusing.  I don't know which API is better without
>> knowing the use-cases for manual transactions.  But Jonas' version is
>> more flexible, because if the two are substantially different you can
>> always just do
>>
>>  { apply: function(isReapply) {
>>      if (isReapply) {
>>          // reapply logic
>>      } else {
>>          // totally separate apply logic
>>      }
>>  }, . . . }
>>
>> which is really no harder to write than
>>
>>  { apply: function() {
>>      // apply logic
>>  }, reapply: function() {
>>      // totally separate reapply logic
>>  }, . . . }
>>
>> It's only one or two lines longer, and one level of indent greater.
>> So I don't think a separate reapply member of the dictionary is
>> useful.  It just makes things more complicated, even if most of the
>> time the logic will be totally separate.
>
> I disagree. I think the boolean makes things more complicated. Boolean
> arguments stink. Every time you want to use this API you need to go look up
> the documentation to remember whether the boolean is "isReapply" or
> "isApply". There's no such confusion if you have a separate method.

Why is it harder to remember one function name and one attribute name,
than to remember to function names?

/ Jonas