Re: [9front] Netsurf 3.9 for Plan 9 (work in progress)

[jamos@oboj.net]

Thank you all for all your feedback, and especially Ori for finding the 
drawing bug! I wonder whether the coordinates that are sent to the 
plan9_update() function is to be able only to redraw the "damaged" or 
updated area of browser window, which might result in better drawing 
performance. I assume that is what you mean with "strided" image? I 
agree that optimisation of the framebuffer driver might not be 
worth-while, if the goal is to implement a native frontend in the end.

Also thanks for noticing the race in the mk file. I don't feel I have a 
good enough understanding on them, and if someone with more mkfile 
experience would like to overhaul them, that would be welcome. The tests 
for the libnsfb was where I started the project and at that time I 
didn't cross-compile, so the clean target is also too stupid and easily 
leaves debris (thus the leftover arm binaries).

Kyle, I will look into the mouse coordinate issue. It's very possible 
that the other framebuffer surfaces that I looked at uses coordinates 
relative to the window. I think that the rio way of handling coordinates 
is a bit unique. I didn't focus much on user input so far.

For fetching web pages from the network there might be, as many of you 
have started to discuss, many different possibilities. One solution 
would be to make 'curl' work, as it is the method used by mainline 
Netsurf, and as it already ported to 9front, at least it is in 
/sys/ports. But it has a lot of dependencies, and I think that the 
option to use 'webfs' definitely is more elegant, if it can be made. My 
port does right now only use standard APE, and not libgnu in ports, 
which I think is good thing (the header files of libgnu are really a 
scary GNU spaghetti).

I fully agree that hosting the project on a git/hg repository would be 
great, and make it easier to work on togehter. Merging with the official 
Netsurf tree would also be a very nice thing, as keeping up-to-date 
would be much easier. But in the current port, I don't at all use their 
build system, which might be unpopular with the maintainers, or hard to 
keep in sync generally. I am subscribed to the netsurf mailing lists, 
and will write them about the existence of the new Plan 9 port. It is 
extra nice now that it not only runs, but also renders webpages!

I'll shortly update the tar-file with the driver-fix and the better 
mkfile for framebuffer test. For repository, maybe I should make myself 
a github or bitbucket account and put it there to start with?

Thank you all, for debugging, comments and discussion!

Jonas Amoson