Translate most of Annotator to JavaScript

[nickstenning]

As discussed repeatedly on the mailing lists and in person, the general consensus has been that a pure-JS Annotator would be a Good Thing. Pros and cons of the switch:

CoffeeScript	JavaScript
Terser code	Better static analysis/code quality tools
Less noisy syntax	Better documentation tools
	Better code style checking tools
	Much bigger community
	Simplifies build/dev tools
	Simplifies packaging

None of the reasons I originally switched to CoffeeScript (lack of decent automated JS code quality tools, difficulty of writing cross-browser JavaScript) remain valid. With that in mind, I kind of accidentally translated most of Annotator to JavaScript. It wasn't an awful lot of work.

My intent is that we merge this large chunk, and then progressively translate the rest of the code (including the tests) to JavaScript as we go along. Do shout if you have any objections.

[tilgovi]

Why var isEmpty = instead of just the named function definition? It seems like this whole file has this pattern.

[tilgovi]

Cleaned up var Foo = function Foo to make them simply function Foo and, more importantly, var Foo = function () to function Foo, without which the functions have no names and so are poorly labeled in stack traces. If there was some reason I'm not aware of these should be changed back, you can remove those last too commits.

[tilgovi]

👍 on all this

[nickstenning]

The var foo = function foo() { ... }; pattern has two possible positives -- it forces people to define functions before they're used, as while the name is hoisted, the function value is not (unlike the form function foo() { ... }). Less importantly, it also (as you discovered) makes for more consistent closing forms:

        };
    };
};

rather than

        };
    };
}

But hey --- I'm not really bothered. I might rebase the changes inline, though, if you prefer it this way.

[nickstenning]

Either way, agree with you that var foo = function () { ... } is not good. That's an oversight on my part.

[nickstenning]

@tilgovi Rebased those changes inline into the translations.

[nickstenning]

I'm pushing the big green button.

[aron]

⭐ very happy to see this :)

[jamiefolsom]

+1!

On Tuesday, October 7, 2014, Aron Carroll notifications@github.com wrote:

[image: ⭐] very happy to see this :)

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[tilgovi]

🎺 🎉 🎆