Re: Do we need a rendering spec?

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 5:53 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa@apple.com> wrote:

> On Jan 23, 2014, at 2:45 PM, Dimitri Glazkov <dglazkov@google.com> wrote:
> > As HTML imports [1] are implemented across browsers, there’s a potential
> for diversity of opinion in how rendering of documents with imports occurs.
> What blocks rendering?
> > What doesn’t? To prevent the inevitable pain of converging on a de-facto
> standard behavior, it would be super-nice to have precise documentation of
> when the rendering engine should start (and stop) rendering the document.
>
> I don't think we want to expose when rendering / painting / style
> resolution happens to the Web just like we don't want to expose GC timing
> to the Web.  e.g. it makes the UAs much more vulnerable against the timing
> attacks.  If the HTML imports specification exposes such timing, then we
> should "fix" that so that we expose such timing.
>
> But before jumping to conclusions, could you clarify how exactly HTML
> imports creates a dependency on the rendering timing?
>

There was a long thread around this subject in November:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013OctDec/thread.html#msg476,
which culminated in realization that developers ultimately want control
over rendering:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013OctDec/0607.html

The whole thread is worth the read, though.

:DG<