>> Given a rendering engine with a powerful and hopefully flexible input >> language, one may be able to write compilers or interpreters for the >> more popular brands. Or am I missing the wood for the trees? >> > > i think you're right on the mark. suppose that acme and rio were built > on "liblayout" and not libframe. liblayout provides a basic boxes-n-glue > view of the world; acme/rio export /dev/layout. a box could contain an image > or a > text frame. then acme could display things like images along with text, > static html content (given an educated htmlfmt), etc.
How far away is abaco from all this? My impression is that it at least aims in that direction. Thing is, it always struck me that abaco and acme ought to be blended, not constructed independently of each other. But I must confess that I'm still too scared to look under the larger Plan 9 applications, I accept them as they come. ++L
