Re: Shadow tree style isolation primitive

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Dimitri Glazkov <dglazkov@google.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 5:46 AM, Olli Pettay <olli@pettay.fi> wrote:
>
>> On 02/05/2015 02:24 AM, Dimitri Glazkov wrote:
>>
>>
>>> However, I would like to first understand if that is the problem that
>>> the group wants to solve. It is unclear from this conversation.
>>>
>>
>> Yes. The marketing speech for shadow DOM has changed over time from "do
>> everything possible, make things awesome" to "explain the platform"
>> to the current "enable easier composition".
>> So it is not very clear to me what even the authors of the spec always
>> want, this said with all the kindness :)
>>
>
> I appreciate the affirmation, the kindness, and the smiley. Though since
> this is public forum, I have to add a few things:
>
> 1) The original "Component Model" (as it was known back then) charter from
> 2011 clearly includes easier composition as one of its main goals, as
> illustrated by https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Component_Model and
> https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Component_Model_Use_Cases. In fact, we
> definitively solved at huge chunk of these problems. For example, Polymer
> is a clear illustration that
> https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Component_Model_Use_Cases#Layout_Manager  is
> nearly 100% solved and there are now examples in the wild of most of these
> use cases solved with Web Components. There's still lots of work to do, of
> course. But
>

... Hanging "but"?! Oh lordy. Oooh, let me turn this into a contemplative
sidebar opportunity.

Shadow DOM and Web Components seem to have what I call the "Unicorn
Syndrome". There's a set of specs that works, proven by at least one
browser implementation and the use in the wild. It's got warts
(compromises) and some of those warts are quite ugly. Those warts weren't
there in the beginning -- they are a result of a hard, multi-year slog of
trying to make a complete system that doesn't fall over in edge cases, and
compromising. A lot.

So there's a temptation to make new proposals (unicorns) that are
wart-free, but incomplete or not well-thought-out. Don't get me wrong. I
like new ideas. What I would like to avoid is judging a workhorse against a
unicorn. Armed with your imagination, unicorn will always win.

:DG<