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+# Original Design
+
+To understand the current design for clipping and positioning (transformations
+and scrolling) in WebRender it can be useful to have a little background about
+the original design for these features. The most important thing to remember is
+that originally clipping, scrolling regions, and transformations were
+properties of stacking contexts and they were completely _hierarchical_. This
+goes a long way toward representing the majority of CSS content on the web, but
+fails when dealing with important edges cases and features including:
+ 1. Support for sticky positioned content
+ 2. Scrolling areas that include content that is ordered both above and below
+    intersecting content from outside the scroll area.
+ 3. Items in the same scrolling root, clipped by different clips one or more of
+    which are defined outside the scrolling root itself.
+ 4. Completely non-hierarchical clipping situations, such as when items are
+    clipped by some clips in the hierarchy, but not others.
+
+Design changes have been a step by step path from the original design to one
+that can handle all CSS content.
+
+# Current Design
+
+All positioning and clipping is handled by the `SpatialTree`. The name is a
+holdover from when this tree was a tree of `Layers` which handled both
+positioning and clipping. Currently the `SpatialTree` holds:
+ 1. A hierarchical collection of `SpatialNodes`, with the final screen
+    transformation of each node depending on the relative transformation of the
+    node combined with the transformations of all of its ancestors. These nodes
+    are responsible for positioning display list items and clips.
+ 2. A collection of `ClipNodes` which specify a rectangular clip and, optionally,
+    a set of rounded rectangle clips and a masking image.
+ 3. A collection of `ClipChains`. Each `ClipChain` is a list of `ClipNode`
+    elements. Every display list item has an assigned `ClipChain` which
+    specifies what `ClipNodes` are applied to that item.
+
+The `SpatialNode` of each clip applied to an item is completely independent of
+the `SpatialNode` applied to the item itself.
+
+One holdover from the previous design is that both `ClipNode` and `SpatialNodes`
+have a parent node, which is either a `SpatialNode` or a `ClipNode`.  From this
+node WebRender can determine both a parent `ClipNode` and a parent `SpatialNode`
+by finding the first ancestor of that type. This is handled by the
+`DisplayListFlattener`.
+
+## `SpatialNode`
+There are three types of `SpatialNodes`:
+  1. Reference frames which are created when content needs to apply
+     transformation or perspective properties to display list items. Reference
+     frames establish a new coordinate system, so internally all coordinates on
+     display list items are relative to the reference frame origin. Later
+     any non-reference frame positioning nodes that display list items belong
+     to can adjust this position relative to the reference frame origin.
+  2. Scrolling nodes are used to define scrolling areas. These nodes have scroll
+     offsets which are a 2D translation relative to ancestor nodes and, ultimately,
+     the reference frame origin.
+  3. Sticky frames are responsible for implementing position:sticky behavior.
+     This is also an 2D translation.
+
+`SpatialNodes` are defined as items in the display list. After scene building
+each node is traversed hierarchically during the `SpatialTree::update()` step.
+Once reference frame transforms and relative offsets are calculated, a to screen
+space transformation can be calculated for each `SpatialNode`. This transformation
+is added the `TransformPalette` and becomes directly available to WebRender shaders.
+
+In addition to screen space transformation calculation, the `SpatialNode` tree
+is divided up into _compatible coordinate systems_. These are coordinate systems
+which differ only by 2D translations from their parent system. These compatible
+coordinate systems may even cross reference frame boundaries. The goal here is
+to allow the application clipping rectangles from different compatible
+coordinate systems without generating mask images.
+
+## `ClipNode`
+
+Each clip node holds a clip rectangle along with an optional collection of
+rounded clip rectangles and a mask image. The fact that `ClipNodes` all have a
+clip rectangle is important because it means that all content clipped by a
+clip node has a bounding rectangle, which can be converted into a bounding
+screen space rectangle.  This rectangle is called the _outer rectangle_ of the
+clip. `ClipNodes` may also have an _inner rectangle_, which is an area within
+the boundaries of the _outer rectangle_ that is completely unclipped.
+
+These rectangles are calculated during the `SpatialTree::update()` phase. In
+addition, each `ClipNode` produces a template `ClipChainNode` used to build
+the `ClipChains` which use that node.
+
+## `ClipChains`
+
+There are two ways that `ClipChains` are defined in WebRender. The first is
+through using the API for manually specifying `ClipChains` via a parent
+`ClipChain` and a list of `ClipNodes`. The second is through the hierarchy of a
+`ClipNode` established by its parent node. Every `ClipNode` has a chain of
+ancestor `SpatialNodes` and `ClipNodes`. The creation of a `ClipNode`
+automatically defines a `ClipChain` for this hierarchy. This behavior is a
+compatibility feature with the old completely hierarchical clipping architecture
+and is still how Gecko and Servo create most of their `ClipChains`. These
+hierarchical `ClipChains` are constructed during the `ClipNode::update()` step.
+
+During `ClipChain` construction, WebRender tries to eliminate clips that will
+not affect rendering, by looking at the combined _outer rectangle_ and _inner
+rectangle_ of a `ClipChain` and the _outer rectangle_ and _inner rectangle_ of
+any `ClipNode` appended to the chain. An example of the goal of this process is
+to avoid having to render a mask for a large rounded rectangle when the rest of
+the clip chain constrains the content to an area completely inside that
+rectangle. Avoiding mask rasterization in this case and others has large
+performance impacts on WebRender.
+
+# Clipping and Positioning in the Display List
+
+Each non-structural WebRender display list item has
+ * A `SpatialId` of a `SpatialNode` for positioning
+ * A `ClipId` of a `ClipNode` or a `ClipChain` for clipping
+ * An item-specific rectangular clip rectangle
+
+The positioning node determines how that item is positioned. It's assumed that
+the positioning node and the item are children of the same reference frame. The
+clipping node determines how that item is clipped. This should be fully
+independent of how the node is positioned and items can be clipped by any
+`ClipChain` regardless of the reference frame of their member clips. Finally,
+the item-specific clipping rectangle is applied directly to the item and should
+never result in the creation of a clip mask itself.
+
+## Converting user-exposed `ClipId`/`SpatialId` to internal indices
+
+WebRender must access `ClipNodes` and `SpatialNodes` quite a bit when building
+scenes and frames, so it tries to convert `ClipId`/`SpatialId`, which are already
+per-pipeline indices, to global scene-wide indices.  Internally this is a
+conversion from `ClipId` into `ClipNodeIndex` or `ClipChainIndex`, and from
+`SpatialId` into `SpatialNodeIndex`. In order to make this conversion cheaper, the
+`DisplayListFlattner` assigns offsets for each pipeline and node type in the
+scene-wide `SpatialTree`.
+
+Nodes are added to their respective arrays sequentially as the display list is
+processed during scene building. When encountering an iframe, the
+`DisplayListFlattener` must start processing the nodes for that iframe's
+pipeline, meaning that nodes are now being added out of order to the node arrays
+of the `SpatialTree`. In this case, the `SpatialTree` fills in the gaps in
+the node arrays with placeholder nodes.
+
+# Hit Testing
+
+Hit testing is the responsibility of the `HitTester` data structure. This
+structure copies information necessary for hit testing from the
+`SpatialTree`. This is done so that hit testing can still take place while a
+new `SpatialTree` is under construction.
+
+# Ideas for the Future
+1. Expose the difference between `ClipId` and `ClipChainId` in the API.
+2. Prevent having to duplicate the `SpatialTree` for hit testing.
+3. Avoid having to create placeholder nodes in the `SpatialTree` while
+   processing iframes.