don't rely on Events?

[pixelzoom]

I'm working on an issue related to dispose, and I ran across this comment in Node.dispose:

4892 Events.prototype.dispose.call( this ); // TODO: don't rely on Events

What does "don't rely on Events" mean? Is there a problem with Events.dispose?....

[jonathanolson]

It's basically referring to #490, where things like Emitter would be strictly better for performance and usability.

[pixelzoom]

Events.dispose currently does nothing. Should it remove all of its listeners, similar to Property.dispose? That would eliminate the need for tricky/buggy logic like I encountered for Dialog while fixing phetsims/vegas#61.

[jonathanolson]

I have no strong preferences on it. If it's helpful to wipe the listeners, go ahead.

[pixelzoom]

If I wipe listeners, I suspect that's going to cause problems throughout PhET code. I typically check hasListener before calling off, but that doesn't seem to be general practice. So I'm not going to make that change. But something to consider if we ever get around to replacing Events with Emitter.

Closing.