Re: [9fans] Links for Plan 9

[vic zandy <zandy@cs.wisc.edu>]

how about writing a "browse server"?

the plan 9 client sends a url to the browse server.
the server, running on some other operating system,
calls a real web browser to fetch and render the page.
the server then scrapes the rendered page and returns
it to the client for display.

i can think of dozens of very icky issues -- forms,
pop-ups, finding links, knowing when the page is loaded
(or hung or unavailable), a reload button, cookies, ...

more interesting, i think, is whether their solutions
can be designed independent of the browser -- so that
they can be solved once, perhaps by hideous and extreme
means, but then maintained with light work.

for example, the mechanism for scraping the page might
involve accessing off-screen portions of a bitmap that
have not been displayed (or perhaps even rendered).
i'm sure that someone could corner browser brand X into
coughing the bits.  but is there a general (perhaps
OS-dependent) technique to coherently "scroll" bits
from another program's window?

the incentive for examining this approach is that if
successful it would avoid the well-decried maintenance
hassles of both a native plan 9 browser and an
eternally incomplete port of some other giant browser.

compared to vnc'ing to the browser host, you'd get a
client in a real plan 9 window and process that can
communicate in the usual ways (e.g., plumbing) without
helpers.  it'd be simpler to fire up.  also, perhaps
the browser server could be designed to serve a group
of users, which might be easier on an organization than
supporting vnc sessions for everyone.

alas, this is only a suggestion, not an offer.