Temporal: Scope Reduction

The meeting of Ecma TC39 in June 2024 discussed the Temporal proposal that has been in the works for a long time by now. Unfortunately, the discussion was not about being able to publish it soon. Instead, a scope reduction was proposed. Apparently, implementors (Google, Apple, Mozilla) have reservations about the proposal's scope size and complexity.

• https://github.com/tc39/proposal-temporal
• https://github.com/tc39/agendas/blob/main/2024/06.md#agenda-items
• https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PPMAxVnVjFwRPuJwOvVsw9nZLQ6jDM8Hd5PNO0Grp4I/edit#slide=id.p

Further information and the exact discussions that took place presumably were not publicly available so far. But now, there is an open PR to add these to the usual repository that contains TC39 meeting notes.

• https://github.com/tc39/notes/pull/330
• https://github.com/tc39/notes/blob/e9e203a8389a2300573209cee58bb1457bc72b07/meetings/2024-06/june-12.md#temporal-stage-3-update-and-scope-reduction

Conclusion: The committee reached consensus that the Temporal proposal is apparently too big. Some parts of it need to be stripped for now and may be reconsidered in follow-up proposals. Specifically, the following parts will be removed from the current proposal:

• Temporal.Calendar
• user calendars
• Temporal.TimeZone
• user time zones
• getISOFields() methods
• withPlainDate() methods
• PlainTime’s toPlainDateTime and toZonedDateTime methods
• epochSeconds properties
• epochMicroseconds properties
• Instant.fromEpochSeconds
• Instant.fromEpochMicroseconds
• PlainDateTime and ZonedDateTime’s toPlainYearMonth and toPlainMonthDay methods
• Instant’s toZonedDateTime method
• Now.zonedDateTime
• Now.plainDateTime
• Now.plainDate
• relativeTo option from Duration.add.

Let's hope that at least the subset of Temporal can be published as a standard soon. Ideally with ECMAScript 2025.