RE: debugging interfaces

It seems to me that the topics you mention here can easily fall within the character of ECMA TC39.   Personally, I think it  will be better for the community if all standards work related to ECMAScript is done within one umbrella organization rather than having multiple organizations  trying to divide up the ECMAScript standards turfs. Ultimately, it’s the same set of browser providers and often the same individuals that have to be involved with all of these activities so it’s just more efficient if we do it in a single venue.

I agree that, a standards meeting is not the ideal place to do design work.  No committee is. However, the way it really works is that most of the serious design work usually gets done by a few individual outside of the “committee” process  and then the design proposals are presented  to be reviewed and tweaked by the committee.  That isn’t much different from how real design occurs in any venue.

The one possible downside for some people may be the ECMA membership requirement.  However, any organization that has any actual standing to serve as  avenue for creating standards is going to have some sort of criteria for participation.

This mailing list is actually not an official ECMA list.  Instead it is essentially an open communications zone that is frequented both by individuals who are actively involved in ECMA TC-39 and members of the community who are interested in the evolution of ECMAScript but are not ECMA members.  I think it has been working pretty well in that regard.  The topic you are interested could also be discussed on this list or if it becomes too confusing intermingling these topics with language design we could set up a parallel list for debugging related discussions.

Informally, this could get started simply by starting to have discussions on this list. To turn this work into an official TC39 activity the next step would probably  be for the interested individuals who work for ECMA member companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, Opera, etc.) to talk to their organizations’ TC39 representatives.  If you aren’t  affiliated with an ECMA member you might want to talk to the ECMA secretariat about what it takes to become a member.  The next TC39 meeting is the last week of July in Redmond WA and this topic could easily be put on the agenda if there is member interest.

Thanks for bringing this up,

Allen