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From: VK on 6 Jun 2010 06:17 > <snip>>The document is misleadingly titled > >"ECMAScript Language Specification" which is false: there is not and > >never was such language and ECMA International never standardized it. > > <snip> > > Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ... It may sound funny but true. ECMA International was never asked to develop a language and/or to give it a name. All they had been asked is to make a formal description of JavaScript as a programming language and a formal description of the code interpretor. Even less, they had been asked to describe JavaScript without any host object parts. That makes JavaScript standard specification (but not the language itself, of course) to be the only one of the kind. It is the only language specification, that doesn't provide *any* tools to get any results from executing programs. It was clearly understood by authors and by customers, so ECMA-262 2nd ed. (August 1998) was saying: "ECMAScript as defined here is not intended to be computationally self- sufficient; indeed, there are no provisions in this specification for input of external data or output of computed results." http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262-arch.htm In the 3rd ed. this part was removed, obviously not because something changed: simply the words like "is not intended to be computationally self-sufficient" didn't "look right" for a language specification, so it was left out as a self-evident fact. Note: ECMA-262 1st ed. (1996) is now an electronic rarity, removed from ECMA official archives. I once had it but I lost it together with my old notebook. It is so lousy that looks like a junior-high unfinished homework rather than an "international standardization organization" product. If anyone has a copy of ECMA-262 1st ed., it would be great to get a link. Same time "ECMAScript" slang term popped up. In the introductory part the described part of JavaScript is called "the ECMA Standard" or "the Standard". Yet repeatedly calling a language "the Standard" was strange, and repeatedly typing "non computationally self-sufficient JavaScript specification without host objects" would be long and silly. So "ECMAScript" in ECMA docs has the similar convenience shortcut origin as "Javascript" in my previous post.
From: Lasse Reichstein Nielsen on 6 Jun 2010 07:13 VK <schools_ring(a)yahoo.com> writes: > Again: the programming language of the Web is called JavaScript, no > space, J and S are capitalized. That capitalization tradition has been lost along the way. Many users of the word don't know that the original language name was capitalized like that. The reason for that is probably that the capitalization wasn't used in the places where most of the users actually wrote the name: type="text/javascript" and language="javascript1.2". It is also a problem that JavaScript, as currently specified by the Mozilla organization, has multiple versions with extra features that are not shared by the other scripting engines. I.e., there are features of JavaScript versions that only exist in Mozilla engines (Spidermonkey, Tracemonkey, Rhino). To misuse a phrase: There is no JavaScript. There is JavaScript 1.0, JavaScript 1.1, JavaScript 1.2, etc. up to JavaScript 1.8.1. These are different languages. Most extend earlier versions. Some (like 1.2) introduced changes that were dropped again. There is also a number of JScript variants that introduce new features not shared with any JavaScript version. And then there are all the other languages that are extensions of the ECMAScript language. Most of these are unnamed, only specified by their implementation's name (Carakan, Futhark, Nitro, Squirrelfish, V8) and have feature sets that change with the implementation's versions, without a separate specification. I.e.: ECMAScript, JavaScript and JScript are language families specified by their separate specifications (each having several versions). Other languages have no separate specifications, only implementations. These are generally extensions of ECMAScript, but not of JavaScript. > JavaScript core language standard described (rather lousy, but > however) in ECMA-262 3rd edition. No, that's the ECMAScript language. The JavaScript core language is specified in (e.g.) https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference This Core JavaScript language includes, e.g., LiveConnect. It also includes an Array.prototype.toSource function. These are not part of ECMAScript, and there are other ECMAScript based languages in browsers that don't have, at least, the latter. > The document is misleadingly titled > "ECMAScript Language Specification" which is false: there is not and > never was such language and ECMA International never standardized it. You have this backwards. The standard is a language specification. The language specified is called ECMAScript, both 1) because the people writing the specification says so, and 2) because it isn't the same language as the one specified by any of the JavaScript versions. > The proper title is given at the top right corner of the first page: > "Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999". Have you read any other ECMA standards? Take from the ECMA-357 standard front page: Standard ECMA-357 2nd Edition / December 2005 ECMAScript for XML (E4X) Specification The former identifies the document, but the latter is the title. The title of ECMA 262 is "ECMAScript Language Specification". And that is also what the document does. It specifies a language. You can call it whatevery you want, but they call it ECMAScript. /L -- Lasse Reichstein Holst Nielsen 'Javascript frameworks is a disruptive technology'
From: VK on 6 Jun 2010 08:26 On Jun 6, 3:13 pm, Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <lrn.unr...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > VK <schools_r...(a)yahoo.com> writes: > > Again: the programming language of the Web is called JavaScript, no > > space, J and S are capitalized. > > That capitalization tradition has been lost along the way. Many users > of the word don't know that the original language name was capitalized > like that. Many Usenet users write "i" instead of "I" and "u" instead of "you". Many quick typers do not use capital letters at all: "i see what u'r saying. i don't agree on that." Does it change anyhow the English spelling rules as they are? If some/many users do not know the proper spelling of the language they are using, clj task is to correct them and to show the right sample, not to adapt FAQ page to the broken orthography. > The reason for that is probably that the capitalization wasn't used in > the places where most of the users actually wrote the name: > type="text/javascript" and language="javascript1.2". Whatever the reason is: this, or just for the speedy typing. I don't care why someone types "u" instead of "you". In public document I will use "you". > To misuse a phrase: There is no JavaScript. > There is JavaScript 1.0, JavaScript 1.1, JavaScript 1.2, etc. up to > JavaScript 1.8.1. These are different languages. Most extend earlier > versions. Some (like 1.2) introduced changes that were dropped again. Sure... And there is not C++ for the same reason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B#Language_standard
From: John G Harris on 6 Jun 2010 12:59 On Sun, 6 Jun 2010 at 03:17:39, in comp.lang.javascript, VK wrote: >> � <snip>>The document is misleadingly titled >> >"ECMAScript Language Specification" which is false: there is not and >> >never was such language and ECMA International never standardized it. >> >> � <snip> >> >> Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ... > >It may sound funny but true. <snip> A considerable majority of governments voted to call it ECMAScript. You are outvoted. And out-ranked. See ISO/IEC 16262:2002, where it says "1 Scope This International Standard defines the ECMAScript scripting language." John -- John Harris
From: VK on 6 Jun 2010 13:46
On Jun 6, 8:59 pm, John G Harris <j...(a)nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote: > On Sun, 6 Jun 2010 at 03:17:39, in comp.lang.javascript, VK wrote: > >> <snip>>The document is misleadingly titled > >> >"ECMAScript Language Specification" which is false: there is not and > >> >never was such language and ECMA International never standardized it. > > >> <snip> > > >> Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ... > > >It may sound funny but true. > > <snip> > > A considerable majority of governments voted to call it ECMAScript. You > are outvoted. And out-ranked. > > See ISO/IEC 16262:2002, where it says > "1 Scope > This International Standard defines the ECMAScript scripting language.." They just repeated the wording from the first page of submitted paper. Fast track procedure, you know... Who cares? Yet you are welcome to use ECMAScript in ECMA International sense - but only as defined by ECMA. I see windows.alert(val) or the like - I calling police if it's called anyhow else but JavaScript ;-) :-| |