Use WebIDL enumerations, not numeric constants

[olivierthereaux]

Originally reported on W3C Bugzilla ISSUE-17323 Tue, 05 Jun 2012 11:15:44 GMT
Reported by Philip Jägenstedt
Assigned to

Audio-ISSUE-18 (NumericConstants): Use WebIDL enumerations, not numeric constants [Web Audio API]

http://www.w3.org/2011/audio/track/issues/18

Raised by: Philip Jägenstedt
On product: Web Audio API

http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/WebIDL/#idl-enums

Use of numeric constants in interface definitions is not good practice for new specs. The WebRTC WG has resolved to move away from this:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-script-coord/2012JanMar/0166.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-script-coord/2012JanMar/0320.html

In HTML, TextTrack.mode was recently changed to enumerations after similar feedback:

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-video-element.html#texttrackmode

These are the members with numeric constants in the Web Audio API spec:

AudioBufferSourceNode.playbackState
AudioPannerNode.panningModel
AudioPannerNode.distanceModel
BiquadFilterNode.type
Oscillator.type
Oscillator.playbackState

[olivierthereaux]

Original comment by Olivier Thereaux on W3C Bugzilla. Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:54:40 GMT

Comments from Chris Rogers, 18 May 2012

Agreed - looking into the details of the exact WebIDL syntax...

http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/WebIDL/#idl-enums

[olivierthereaux]

Original comment by Ehsan Akhgari [:ehsan] on W3C Bugzilla. Fri, 24 Aug 2012 19:33:42 GMT

Web IDL enumerations are only meant to be used for strings.

[olivierthereaux]

Original comment by Olivier Thereaux on W3C Bugzilla. Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:15:56 GMT

WebIDL fixed per Bug 17777.