Clarification on about:blank pages in "Initialize the Document object"

[yoavweiss]

I'm reading through initialize the Document object to understand if Create an NT entry (in step 16) is supposed to be called for about:blank pages.

I think the answer is yes, but step 5 is ambigous: "If browsingContext is still on its initial about:blank Document .... then do nothing" and step 6 starts with "otherwise".

I'm assuming that means that for about:blank pages, steps 7+ still run, but it's not super clear.
If I'm right with my assumptions, I think it'd be better to eliminate step 5 and include its (negated) condition directly in step 6. If I'm wrong, it'd be better to say "abort these steps" or something else that's more precise than "do nothing".

[domenic]

Your reading is correct. I'm a bit unsure how you could read it any other way? Does it help to mentally translate the "If/Otherwise" into if/else code blocks?

We've avoided the architecture you suggest because the negated condition is hard to reason about and doesn't capture any clear property of the situation. Whereas the condition as stated today is clearly about same-origin initial about:blank replacement.

[yoavweiss]

In that case, I think it would help to make the "if/otherwise" conditions all live in the same step (or as substeps of a single steps).

[domenic]

That would be a pretty big departure from how we do other if/otherwise conditions in the spec, so I think it would just make things more confusing for readers...

[yoavweiss]

OK, that's fair. Thanks for clarifying.

[noamr]

Note that that if/otherwise statement refers to navigating from about:blank with history.replace.
Loading about:blank in the first place does not go through the "Initialize the document" algorithm.

[noamr]

IIUC about:blank's document is created here, without navigation params and everything that goes into initializing a document.