Should isRendered return 'false' on error?

[Richard.Kennard]

Dear All,

Could I please confirm the logic of the following code from 
javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase...

    public boolean isRendered()
    {
        if (_rendered != null) return _rendered.booleanValue();
        ValueBinding vb = getValueBinding("rendered");
        Boolean v = vb != null ? (Boolean)vb.getValue(getFacesContext()) : null;
        return v != null ? v.booleanValue() : DEFAULT_RENDERED;
    }

...this code throws a very ugly Exception and halts page rendering if the value 
binding cannot be evaluated. However, shouldn't it instead catch the Exception 
and return false? Because I thought the logic of the EL was to degrade 
gracefully with 'reasonable defaults' (and 'false' is the default for a 
boolean)?

Of course, I could have gotten this completely wrong,

Thanks,

Richard.