hasDroppedEntry in PerformanceObserverCallback · Issue #547 · w3ctag/design-reviews (original) (raw)

A dump of other naming ideas:

• isFull - No, because it needs to reflect past state.
• wasFull - No, because being full is fine. The state we communicate is not reaching the limit, but going over the limit and thus having dropped and missed out on one or more entires.
• bufferOverflow - No, because it needs to reflect past state.
• bufferOverflowed - Maybe, but feels awkward, and I think the last two chars would be too easily ignored or read over and thus not communicating that it is a past state.
• hasBufferOverflow - Maybe, but I think we want past-tense? (per @npm1).
• hadBufferOverflow - Maybe, and is grammatically fine if you interpret "buffer overflow" as a noun - the happening of the overflow. If you intepret it as a verb, then "had [its] buffer overflow" could still be fine, but is stretching it. If we see it as a verb it would probably need to be "has [the] buffer overflown", "had an overflowed buffer", or "did [the] buffer overflow".
• didBufferOverflow - Maybe.
• wasBufferOverflown – Maybe, but feels awkward.
• wasBufferOverflow – Maybe, but feels awkward also.

I have a slight preference toward "has" as it is common and familiar in other boolean interfaces in (Web) APIs. But, admitedly those APIs are about actual possessive nouns like hasChildNodes, hasFeature, and of course hasOwnProperty. While "to have" is grammatically versatile and may be used far beyond simple nouns that belong to something, it is not ideal and can be especially confusing for ESL learners. Also, we couldn't actually use "has", we'd need "had" which I don't think I've seen before in a Web API.

Using "is" or "was" for this boolean state feels more natural, I think, and both of those prefixes exist in Web APIs. It's just that.. I can't think of a name that uses "was" and isn't awkward or incorrect. Any other ideas?