Export browsingContext.BrowsingContext?

[domenic]

WICG/nav-speculation#403 is attempting to add a new event. We'd like to define

speculation.PrefetchStatusUpdatedParameters = {
   context: browsingContext.BrowsingContext,  
   url: text,
   status: speculation.PreloadingStatus
}

but cannot because it is not exported.

https://webbluetoothcg.github.io/web-bluetooth/#issue-194ad560 seems to be a similar issue.

This seems like it would be a common problem, so, maybe this is working as intended and I can't quite understand why? If so, some guidance for other module writers would be helpful.

[OrKoN]

Thanks for filing! I think this is mostly a tooling problem, it should be possible to reference browsingContext.BrowsingContext in the nav-speculation spec but the following tooling could break:

1. the cddl validator (if you set up one for the repo).
2. https://github.com/w3c/webref / bikeshed?
3. code generators based on CDDL in implementation https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/chromium-bidi or other packages like https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/webdriver-bidi-protocol

I would suggest using browsingContext.BrowsingContext and we should sort out the tooling issue at the implementation side.

P.S. AFAIK the CDDL RFC does not offer any way to export/import things so we would need to mark dependent specs in some other way if needed.

[domenic]

Apologies for not being clearer. By "export", I meant using Bikeshed (or respec)'s ability to export <dfn>s. Right now https://w3c.github.io/webdriver-bidi/#cddl-type-browsingcontextbrowsingcontext has the HTML source of

<dfn class="dfn-paneled has-dfn-panel" data-dfn-type="cddl-type" data-noexport="" id="cddl-type-browsingcontextbrowsingcontext" role="button" aria-expanded="true" tabindex="100"><code>browsingContext.BrowsingContext</code></dfn>

which, per the data-noexport="" attribute, prohibits other specs from referencing it.

[OrKoN]

I see, thanks for clarifying, so the definition is generated based on the CDDL snippet by Bikeshed. It only started being recently supported and previously we had raw CDDL snippets in the spec with no definitions generated in the HTML output. It looks like in the current implementation CDDL definitions cannot not be exported speced/bikeshed#2977

[OrKoN]

I think you could also use https://w3c.github.io/webdriver-bidi/#navigable-id as it is what the CDDL type is backed by (this one should be exported).

[tidoust]

CDDL definitions are not exported by default because, as opposed to IDL definitions, CDDL definitions are not part of a single namespace. Their scope is the CDDL module they are defined in. Exporting CDDL types by default could potentially create duplicates.

Now, "not exported by default" is different from "cannot be exported". Definitions can be exported, there's just no way to change definitions within a <pre> block in Bikeshed as far as I know. That needs to be done in the rest of the prose.

In short, adding <dfn cddl-type export>browsingContext.BrowsingContext</dfn> somewhere outside of the <pre> block (e.g., in the section heading) would export the CDDL type.

Side note: the WebDriver BiDi spec exports a number of command types already using <dfn export for="commands">... but that creates generic terms, not proper CDDL types (and so these definitions are disconnected from the underlying CDDL <pre> block). Ideally, that should be fixed to rather use <dfn cddl-type export>, but this requires looking into and updating specs that reference these terms.