Re: Size for reftests

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 7:58 AM, Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org> wrote:

> On 23/01/2014 14:18 , James Graham wrote:
>
>> It seems like WebKit/Blink currently use 800x600. Mozilla have also used
>> that but there is a push toward 600x600 which should be faster and
>> easier to run on mobile.
>>
>> We need to pick one of these.
>>
>
> Is there any reason not to pick 600x600?


There was a thread on webkit-dev back in April of 2013 about this:

https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2013-April/024766.html

At that time David Baron mentioned that Mozilla was currently using
800x1000, but he thought there had been some agreement to use 800x600 for
the W3C tests and to switch to that.

As James said, WebKit and Blink's legacy tests all assume 800x600; of
course, there are many tests that produce larger pages and hence
scrollbars, etc. It would be nice if they were rewritten to not do so
(unless testing the scrollbars was the point), but I don't expect that to
happen any time soon.

It would be unfortunate if we had to figure out a way to use two different
sized windows, and I would expect running tests designed for a 600x600
screen to occasionally fail on an 800x600 screen. I would also be surprised
if 600x600 really made things much faster, but I am often surprised by
things ...

So, those would be the reasons I'd vote for 800x600. I admit they are
largely self-serving :).

One could argue that reftests should be mostly viewport-size-independent
(within reason), and that we should change or fix ones that aren't. It
would not surprise me that there are some tests that *have* to be
size-dependent, but I don't know of any offhand. I also would not be
surprised if guaranteeing size independence often introduced unnecessary
complexity into a test as well ...

-- Dirk