Looking to enlist some external expertise in this area. To review, get on a call, or find someone else.

stringref is a competing-ish proposal, but:

What I describe is what the stringref proposal gives you. We don’t yet have consensus on this proposal in the Wasm standardization group, and we may never reach there, although I think it’s still possible. As I understand them, the objections are two-fold:

1. WebAssembly is an instruction set, like AArch64 or x86. Strings are too high-level, and should be built on top, for example with (array i8).

2. The requirement to support fast WTF-16 code unit access will mean that we are effectively standardizing JavaScript strings.

That suggests that there are bodies buried in the vicinity.

Martin: it's a big one and also not a big one... really interesting. there was some discussion in Seattle. But not enough time to get into it...

Dan: is there something that could be brought to our issue?

Martin: not right now... We need help. We need someone who has more context but is not directly connected to the work. It could be that this is non-contraversial in TC39...

<blockquote>

Thank you for your patience while waiting for us to take a look at this.

The <abbr title="Technical Architecture Group">TAG</abbr> currently lacks domain expertise in the internals of JavaScript and WASM implementations, so we're ill-equiped to do a deep dive here. You've clearly put a ton of effort into this, and your document more than adequately addresses the handful of things that came to our minds while reviewing it. We don't see any obvious issues with the proposal as it stands.

We'll close this review for now. Please let us know if your design substantively changes, and we'll take another look.

</blockquote>

Posted and closed as satisfied.

Yves: it makes sense. Would require people well versed in intricate optimisation of js engine to say if it's okay. They considered i18n, many issues, it makes sense

Tess: you can tell they put a lot of effort into it. We don't have the expertise. It's very dense. It's probably fine.

Yves: the fact they were discussing issues with different encodings and things like that is good

Tess: if you want someone who is not working on it and has all the domain knowledge...

Yves: the number of people able to know that is very limited

Amy: if there are no conflicts or issue with other things in the web platform, that's probably all we can bring at this point

Tess: I don't think it's architecturally unsound to do this. They do seem to be tackling someof the challenges head on.

Yves: did they have i18n review?

Tess: don't know what kind of HR the WASM folks do. A lot of this happens in the CG.

Yves: Looks good to us, but if they are looking at an edge case please ask the i18n WG to review this

Tess: works for me

Draft closing comment, to be reviewed before plenary:

<blockquote>

Thank you for your patience while waiting for us to take a look at this.

Whenever dealing with strings on the web platform, <abbr title=internationalization>i18n</abbr> issues inevitably arise. Have the <abbr title=WebAssembly>WASM</abbr> folk gotten i18n review of this?

Otherwise, the <abbr title="Technical Architecture Group">TAG</abbr> currently lacks domain expertise in the internals of JavaScript and WASM implementations, so we're ill-equiped to do a deep dive here. You've clearly put a ton of effort into this, and your document more than adequately addresses the handful of things that came to our minds while reviewing it.

We'll close this review for now. Please let us know if your design substantively changes, and we'll take another look.

</blockquote>