Rename "ancillary" to "supporting" and "non-ancillary" to "essential." #438
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I have a slight concern about changing "ancilliary" to "supporting", as "ancilliary" is somewhat neutral whereas "supporting" may be interpreted as describing these uses as more benign, particularly given the document says the task force doesn't have consensus on how the APIs should be handled.
| <dd> | ||
| Web APIs that were designed to support users' immediate goals, like <a | ||
| data-cite="dom#interface-event">DOM events</a> and <a | ||
| data-cite="cssom-view-1#extension-to-the-element-interface">element position | ||
| observers</a>. | ||
| </dd> | ||
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| <dt><dfn>Ancillary APIs computed from existing information</dfn></dt> | ||
| <dt><dfn>Supporting APIs computed from existing information</dfn></dt> |
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Unrelated to the change being made in this PR, but I find the "Supporting APIs computed from existing information" phrasing a bit strange (what's a "computed API"?) How about something like "Supporting APIs that provide derived information"?
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Another approach might be "primary" vs "secondary" instead of "non-ancillary" and "ancillary". Or maybe "primary" and "auxiliary"? |
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This is two changes and I'm not a fan of one of the two.
Moving from non-ancillary to essential really does clarify things for me. It's not just about the negation of the negation, but about the non-optionality involved. (Though reading some of the ways in which "non-ancillary" was used, I have reservations. Is the event timing API really essential?)
Moving from Ancillary to Supporting makes a value judgment that I don't like. Curiously, it fits pretty well in some ways, but only by changing who is the focus of the statement. Consider the "billing advertisers" case. Labeling that as "ancillary" makes sense for the site visitor when they are the focus of the statement. Labeling it as "supporting" makes more senses when the website is the implicit focus.
One of the nice things about this document is that it places end users in focus virtually 100% of the time. This change would go some way to dilute that. Even if "ancillary" is a bit pompous, I'd want a better word than "supporting" to replace it.
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