[whatwg] API for encoding/decoding ArrayBuffers into text

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> 
> Something that has come up a couple of times with content authors
> lately has been the desire to convert an ArrayBuffer (or part thereof)
> into a decoded string. Similarly being able to encode a string into an
> ArrayBuffer (or part thereof).
> 
> Something as simple as
> 
> DOMString decode(ArrayBufferView source, DOMString encoding);
> ArrayBufferView encode(DOMString source, DOMString encoding,
> [optional] ArrayBufferView destination);
> 
> would go a very long way. The question is where to stick these
> functions. Internationalization doesn't have a obvious object we can
> hang functions off of (unlike, for example crypto), and the above
> names are much too generic to turn into global functions.

Shouldn't this just be another ArrayBufferView type with special 
semantics, like Uint8ClampedArray? DOMStringArray or some such? And/or a 
getString()/setString() method pair on DataView?

Incidentally I _strongly_ suggest we only support UTF-8 here.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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