On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Dominic Cooney <domin...@chromium.org> wrote: > Although the default provided by the spec is important, early adopters are > also important in shaping practice. There is apparently strong conviction on > both sides of the argument. If shadows are public by default, there is no > serious obstacle to making them private on an ad-hoc basis; if shadows are > private by default, there is no serious obstacle to making them public on an > ad-hoc basis. Maybe the spec should include non-normative commentary to make > web component authors aware of this choice, and then the "market"/Darwinian > process/etc. will decide.
An argument to the contrary (which you do seem to acknowledge later in your message, if I'm reading correctly): if you make shadow private, but allow authors to make them public on an ad-hoc basis, there's no way for tools to reliably access the public shadows. This was a problem earlier in the spec, when it was in exactly that state - you got handed your shadow root explicitly, and could, if you wanted, assign it to a public property on your own. That meant, though, that you could assign it to *any* property, so tools couldn't predict where to look. ~TJ