string tendrils

[jaytaph]

I see html5ever uses the concept of str tendrils instead of regular strings. This could be the way to achieve zero-copy (or at least close enough). Maybe we need to do some research on this structure and implementation to give a good pro/con list?

[emwalker]

I think zero-copy is very interesting if we can get it to work. Might make the code littered with lifetimes, though. We should probably investigate this at some point, and see what implications it would have. If it looks like it might get in the way, we can postpone the work. If it looks like it might not get in the way, we can incorporate it earlier.

This assumes zero-copy will speed things up and keep the memory footprint down, which I think are good initial assumptions.