I think it's fine as is, and probably more accurate. dropdown() is a function you are executing to return an object.

@browner12 I agree with your reasoning.

How do you think Alpine's docs can help beginners like me understand that there's no difference between x-data="dropdown()" and x-data="dropdown"? Should all examples use x-data="dropdown()" instead of x-data="dropdown"?

is kind of less of an Alpine question, and more of a JS question. Alpine does do some magic that allows you to omit the parentheses, and you're kind of not technically writing Javascript in the attribute, but IMO I treat it as valid Javascript, which is why I always use the parentheses.

consistency would be nice, and I would personally lean towards using the parentheses, but that's something a maintainer will have to decide.

To clarify on the difference, if the function is nested in an object, and accesses this, the this will be different between with and without the parentheses.