TC39 - ECMAScript

Upcoming meetings

We have regular phone conferences, Tuesday 9 AM Pacific time and about once every two months when we meet face to face. The next face-to-face meetings will take place on 28-29 March 2012 at Google in San Bruno CA (USA), on 23-24 May 2012 at Northeastern University in Boston, MA (USA), on 25-26 July 2012 at Microsoft in Redmond, WA (USA), on 24-25 September 2012 at Mozilla in San Francisco, CA (USA) and on 28-29 November 2012 at Apple in Cupertino, CA (USA).

Activities

A presentation "ECMAScript overview" by J. Neumann, TC39 Chairman, is available here. The audio file is available here.

Russian translation of ECMAScript Edition 3

The Russian translation of the Standard ECMA-262 3^rd edition has been finalized and is now available. Ecma International would like to draw the attention on the following points:

this translation has been done outside of Ecma International - but with its consent - by individuals who would like to promote ECMAScript on a voluntary basis. Ecma International expresses its appreciation for that.
Ecma International does not have the means and the expertise to check the quality of this translation
shall a conflict arise between the original English version and the Russian translation, the English version shall be considered as the official version of the Standard

The Russian translation of ECMA-262 3^rd edition is available here.

Current work on ECMAScript Edition 5

This revision of ECMA-262 is known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition. It was previously developed under the working name ECMAScript 3.1, which will no longer be used. ECMAScript is the scripting language that is used to create web pages with dynamic behavior. ECMAScript, which is more commonly known by the name JavaScript™, is an essential component of every web browser and the ECMAScript standard is one of the core standards that enable the existence of interoperable web applications on the World Wide Web.

The Fifth Edition codifies de facto interpretations of the language specification that have become common among browser implementations and adds support for new features that have emerged since the publication of the Third Edition. Such features include accessor properties, reflective creation and inspection of objects, program control of property attributes, additional array manipulation functions, support for the JSON object encoding format, and a strict mode that provides enhanced error checking and program security.

The last major revision of the ECMAScript standard was the Third Edition, published in 1999. After completion of the Third Edition, significant work was done to develop a Fourth Edition. Although development of a Fourth Edition was not completed, that work influenced ECMAScript, Fifth Edition and is continuing to influence the ongoing development of ECMAScript. Work on future ECMAScript editions continues as part of the previously announced ECMAScript Harmony project.

The ECMAScript, Fifth Edition specification has been developed by Ecma TC39 whose membership includes all major browser vendors.

A comparable test suite known as Test262 (ES5) has been under development for over a year and will soon be accessible on the Ecma web site.

A new edition of the standard is currently under development with a target date of December 2013 for completion.

At the December 2009 General Assembly, this Fifth Edition Candidate Specification was officially adopted as Standard ECMA-262 5^th Edition.

ECMA-262 5^th Edition has been submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for revision of ISO/IEC 16262.

On June 17, 2010 the Ecma General Assembly approved an experimental software copyright policy. This policy is being applied by Ecma TC39.

In November 2010, Ecma prepared a draft Standard ECMA-262 Edition 5.1 to be fully aligned with the draft Standard ISO/IEC 16262 3^rd edition. That Edition 5.1 was approved in June 2011.

The current work on ECMAScript "Harmony" is described on this Wiki.

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