Re: [9fans] Compiling 9atom kernel WAS: Re: spaces in filenames

[errno <errno@cox.net>]

On Sunday, May 01, 2011 04:56:40 PM blstuart@bellsouth.net wrote:
> > Starting Goal:  a modern, standards compliant web engine library
> > for Plan 9
>
> As others have pointed out that's pretty hard to define,
>

Agreed, I did try to make an attempt at a modicum of a definition to
work from, but it was in an earlier post:

(by "web experience", I'm not talking about porting firefox and flash to
Plan 9 - I'm talking about native or ported libraries for what wikipedia
refers to as a "web browser engine" or "layout engine"; and by "fully
functional", I'm talking about something that can score at least an
80% or so on the acid2 test.)

web browser engine (html, css, dom & ecmascript)


> but in the current web world, you can cover a surprisingly large
> fraction of sites if you have good JavaScript and CSS support.
>

Definitely:  css 2.1 (or 3), ecmascript 3rd (or 5th) w/ dom support,
html 4.1 (or 5)

That's the entire client side of "the web". (well, ssl is pretty crucial...)


Digression:
---
With regards to "web browsers" - the over-generalized kitchen-sync
applications that supply the cookie management and password
storing, and bookmarks, and cert management, and home pages,
and back/forward  buttons and all that shtuff - a decent web engine
library would facilitate any number and any manner of unique and
specialized front-ends. The engine is the important part, the
actual front-ends are expected to just... materialize.

Interesting-ish web browsers:

luakit: http://luakit.org/projects/luakit/
vimprobable: http://vimprobable.org/

Personally though, I'm tired of the "web browser" and would like to see
more of a "web shell". A "web shell" would look like a command shell,
have zero interface or control widgets, and would consist entirely of the
html canvas. Ctrl-c exits the html canvas and throws you back into the
web command shell. Type a url, hit enter - the command shell is replaced
with the html canvas again. No back/forward/home buttons, no menus or
url bars, or search bars, etc., no config screens - just like an rc shell.
---

> Running Java in the browser isn't as trendy as it once was, so the
> big missing piece would be Flash, which of course, is the root of
> all evil.
>

In my mind, for whatever little that's worth, I think flash (and java)
could both be reasonably ditched entirely. Under the naive hope
that "the web" has already moved away from embedding java, and
flash is next to go (once html 5 is generally ubiquitous).


> > Options:
> >
> > * write from scratch
> >
> > * port existing codebase
>
> There's one other possibility that I've thought about.  Inferno's
> browser charon is more capable than it might appear.  It has
> some degree of JavaScript support.  The main thing I've noticed
> when trying to use it for some day-to-day browsing is that
> it lacks CSS and could use some work on performance.  I suspect
> that adding CSS to charon and doing some performance work
> on it would be easier than either of those two options.
>

I suspect netsurf might actually be better to work from than charon,
if only because netsurf is already written c rather than limbo, and
has already been ported to many platforms.

Another idea, is rather than port an entire existing web engine
stack (webkit) - is to just cherry pick some of the separate pieces -
spidermonkey and libcss (both written in c), for instance - port them
over individually then bake them into abaco or a "webfs-ng" or
something.