The introduction of Annex B of the ECMA-262 standard says:
… All of the language features and behaviours specified in this annex have one or more undesirable characteristics and in the absence of legacy usage would be removed from this specification. …
… Programmers should not use or assume the existence of these features and behaviours when writing new ECMAScript code. …
This absolutely sounds like “deprecated” to me. However, it doesn’t fit the description text of {{Deprecated_header}}
, which states:
… has been removed from the Web standards …
… it is in the process of being dropped …
This doesn’t fit, because introduction of Annex B of the ECMA-262 standard also says:
… However, the usage of these features by large numbers of existing web pages means that web browsers must continue to support them. …
So how should properties defined in Annex B be documented in MDN?
Currently this is handled inconsistently:
Reasons to use {{Deprecated_header}}
:
- Consistent with other pages
Reasons to use a custom deprecation warning:
- Text fits better
- Can quote/cite the Introduction text of Annex B to provide evidence, that it is actually deprecated.
The last point actually seems to be important because:
Some MDN-pages, that currently not use {{Deprecated_header}}
used {{Deprecated_header}}
in older revisions (e.g. escape()
, unescape()
, String.prototype.substr()
)
Some MDN-pages, that currently not use the Depricated Tag used it previously (unescape()
, Object.prototype.__proto__
)
It was removed from these pages with comments like
Regarding the specs, substr is not deprecated nor there is any plan to do so a priori
or
There doesn’t appear to be any evidence (other than circular references on MDN) that this function is deprecated. It’s still in the latest draft and there are no proposals to remove it.
although the same introduction text of annex B existed when the deprecation note was removed. (I believe, that @binoculars, @Ende93 and @SphinxKnight didn’t notice this introduction text when they removed the deprecation notes - and therefore the text should be linked/quoted.)
I think, that this should be handled consistently - but how?