TC39 - ECMAScript

Upcoming meetings

We have weekly phone conferences, Tuesday 9 AM Pacific time, except once every two months when we meet face to face. The next face-to-face meetings will take place on 30 September-1 October 2010 (USA) and on 17-18 November 2010 (location to be decided).

Activities

TC39 (previously: TC39-TG1) has made public a reference implementation of the proposed ECMA-262 4^th edition language and is continuing to refine that implementation based on public and internal feedback (see the ECMAScript Programming Language website). A wiki for editing the ECMAScript Edition 4 spec has been set up and most of it is public.

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 will be 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 candidate specification has been developed by Ecma TC39 whose membership includes all major browser vendors. The Candidate milestone designates that the authoring process is complete. This now begins a testing and validation phase of the project where TC39 members will create and test implementations of the candidate specification to verify its correctness and the feasibility of creating interoperable implementations. The test implementations will also be used for web compatibility testing to ensure that the revised specification remains compatible with existing web applications. TC39 members Opera, Mozilla, and Microsoft have each committed to participating in this testing process. Testing is expected to be complete by mid-July 2009. It is anticipated that any technical errors and ambiguities will be resolved during this process, and that a final draft of the specification can be agreed upon in September for submission to the Ecma General Assembly for final approval in December 2009. It is anticipated that this will result in a fast-track submission to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for revision of ISO/IEC 16262.

The ECMAScript, Fifth Edition Candidate Specification is now publicly available from the Ecma International web site if you click here.

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

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