I'd like to clarify my intent here. The document's main purpose is to
help the reviewers, so the main purpose should be to explain what the
bidi code does, and how it fits into the Mozilla architecture and code.
There is no need for lengthy explanations of Mozilla's architecture,
which have already been provided by the authors (though some of them may
need to be updated).
So it may be a good idea to have some pointers to those documents, along
with a few sentences about Mozilla's architecture:
http://mozilla.org/newlayout/doc/
Perhaps the explanation of bidi itself and terms such as "visual" could
also be a separate document, and you could have a simple one-paragraph
intro in the reviewers' document that points to this bidi backgrounder.
Erik
Erik van der Poel wrote:
>
> This is a great start. I think it would be even better if you had a more
> gentle introduction. Perhaps the document could start with an
> explanation of what bidi is, and what the purpose of the document is
> (and the intended audience).
>
> Also near the beginning, it would be nice to have a very high level
> review of Mozilla's architecture, followed by a description of how bidi
> fits into this picture. I.e. talk about the parser, content model (DOM),
> frame model, view model, JavaScript calling DOM APIs, reflow vs
> incremental reflow, etc, followed by the bidi specifics.
>
> This would give the reviewers a good idea about how bidi fits into the
> system, where it gets called, how often it gets called, etc, so that
> they can look at it from the point of view of design, performance,
> footprint, modularity, etc.
>
> There are also some terms like "visual" that many readers would not
> understand, so you could either explain those terms as you use them for
> the first time, or have a glossary near the end.
