I'd rather see a constant symbol like
rtf.format(3.14, Intl.RelativeTimeFormat.SECOND); rtf.format(3.14, Intl.RelativeTimeFormat.SECOND);Thanks for feedback!
I understand where your suggestion is coming from, but please, take into account that we are designing the API to fit into the whole ECMA402 Intl API model.
The API we ended up with seems to be more consistent with it than what you suggested. It also allows us to, in the future extend it to compound units more easily.
Saying that, if you have a motivational o help us, come to ecma402 and review our active proposals! We have a bunch such as Intl.Locale, Number first revision, ListFormat etc :) That's a great time to work on the design of them!
Hope that helps!
Plenty of existing JS APIs do the stringly thing here, so the proper thing for a checker to do is just check the strings.
Try putting your cursor between the quotes here and hit ctl-space: http://www.typescriptlang.org/play/#src=fetch(%7B%0D%0A%20%2...
If they're constants you can look at all constants available for Intl.RelativeTimeFormat, IDEs can do autocomplete, analysers can check if the value is valid and alert if not. That's just off the top of my head; I imagine there are even more reasons.