Wrong this in $w.dispatchEvent for on* callbacks

Sorry, in the first paragraph please don't mind the messed-up formatting, so you should read:

[...] you use "_this" where it really should be "this" [...]

(I apologize in advance in case I seem a bit lost, I haven't followed or played with EnvJS in a while)

First, I just realized I never mentioned this bug was for the code in "src/window/event.js"

I just checked Thatcher's branch (is it the main one?), and the commit 9bc5f5d603d911ea8fe8d52f806e296a0dcde7f3 on 2009-08-18 effectively makes this bug irrelevant, as the change in scoping eliminated the problem. Well, providing the new scope handling is conform.

I looked a bit at "test/unit/events.js" and the likes, and out-of-my-head here's how I think I would check it. Please note though, it hasn't been tested:

test("Check that 'this' in event handlers refers to the object receiving the event", function() {
    expect(4);

    // get a few objects the event will bubble up to
    var img = document.getElementById('eventsFrame')
      .contentDocument.getElementById('theIMG');
    var a = document.getElementById('eventsFrame')
      .contentDocument.getElementById('theA');
    var p = document.getElementById('eventsFrame')
      .contentDocument.getElementById('theP');
    var li = document.getElementById('eventsFrame')
      .contentDocument.getElementById('theLI');

    // add handlers
    addHdlr = function(elem, id) {
        elem.addEventListener('click', function(event){
            try{
                ok( event.target === img && this === elem,
                    "Scope: 'this' refers to element '" + id + "'");
            }catch(e){print(e);}
        });
    }
    addHdlr(img, "theIMG");
    addHdlr(a, "theA");
    addHdlr(p, "theP");
    addHdlr(li, "theLI");

    // create and dispatch event
    __click__(img);    
});

changed milestone since I'm trying to do an offical 1.0.0 tag and this is important but fits best with 1.1 goals

I believe this issue is resolved in commit 66c2765 which I have just pushed to thatcher//master.

I was messing with test/unit/events.js for something else (adding testing of 'onunload' events), and noticed the commented-out test at the end with a pointer to this ticket. Unfortunately, the description of the problem here and the expected results in the test case aren't correct. JavaScript code that is in the literal value assigned to an event-handler HTML attribute in the page text itself is supposed to execute in a context where this refers to the DOM object for the HTML element where the handler is defined, as described above. (I actually implemented this behavior some time ago, but didn't know about this ticket to clear it then.) However, event handlers that are defined in the normal flow of JavaScript execution and assigned to the DOM object's event handler by JavaScript (i.e., element.onload=aFunction or element.addEventListener()) execute with the this that is appropriate to the scope in which they are defined. The test case above creates handlers with addEventListner() and so should not pass when executed in env.js or a real browser.

I modified my existing test cases so that the handlers specified as HTML attributes check for the correct values of their this references. I also noticed, though, that the proposed test case is the only place (at least that I'm aware of) where we employ addEventListener() in the unit tests. So, I re-purposed and refactored the proposed test to focus on this, and it is included in my commit referenced above.

Hopefully u'all will agree that this ticket can be closed,

glen