Re: SimpleWebKit (was GNUstep Web browser (was Re: WebKit Bounty))

[Helge Hess]

On Mar 25, 2007, at 12:49, hns@computer.org wrote:
> Hm. Since everybody appears to agree that full WebKit is more powerful
> and robust and SimpleWebKit can only be a subset, you should in that
> case simply use the ported WebKit and not SimpleWebKit.

I don't think so. Embedding full Gecko or KHTML probably requires  
much more resources than SimpleWebKit. As mentioned several times by  
others there are more uses to HTML than just web browsing :-)

> I have no idea how to really solve that otherwise - besides renaming
> all classes to avoid name conflicts. But that hurts those >80%
> applications which just need either one.

Right now we have no applications using either one, not sure where  
you get the 80% number :-).
And how it will be used also remains to be seen :-) I'd say that  
potentially 80+ *will* use both (because SimpleWebKit could be used a  
lot for widgets, not for regular HTML) and still will need to branch  
into the public web.

You just need to do the API as a frontend, exactly like its done for  
KHTML. Don't know how this will hurt any application. It makes the  
backend slightly more complex (because of the WebKit layer).

> Yes. But neither WebKit nor SimpleWebKit supports RSS (directly). So,
> you can link either one with the RSS framework.

Of course, but I don't want to load a 10MB browser on startup when I  
just need to render a few tags :-)

> But both have a compatible plugin architecture for adding new MIME  
> content types since it is part of WebView.

Yes, thats totally unrelated.

> > In fact I expect that a lot of frameworks and apps will use HTML
> > plugins instead of native GUI elements over time (sometime
> > SimpleWebKit might be perfect for). Just check NewsFire or Adium.
>
> There are IMHO exactly two sets of interfaces which applications
> should use to remain portable:
> Web* classes and NSAttributedString's -initWithHTML:
>
> > If you only want to build two versions of a web browser, it doesn't
> > matter. But if you want to integrate an HTML engine in an app and use
> > it as a core component, it matters a lot.
> I think -[NSAttributedString initWithHTML:] and -[WebView
> stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:] should be the standard means
> of integrating the HTML engine from a software architectural point of
> view with the KISS-principle in mind. You would have to do it that way
> as well if you port full WebKit or run on Cocoa. Or do you think of a
> different task?

Just take a look at how the applications I mentioned use WebKit.  
Using HTML for regular UI stuff is getting more and more common.


Anyways, you probably want to concentrate on coding instead of  
discussions ;-) Actually I'm *most* interested in a GNUstep/xyzStep  
for the N800. And this involves a browser which is sufficiently small  
to run on that device.

Greets,
  Helge
--
Helge Hess
http://www.helgehess.eu/