Hi,
Patrick Cardona wrote:
Hello,
Until now, we have not a modern neither efficient web browser well
integrated in the GNUstep echosystem on GNU/Linux nor BSD:
No we don't... and we will perhaps never have if a miracle happens. It
is a hot topic and was discussed to death in the past - especially for
those aiming at a Workspace (aka Desktop Environment). I invested
personally a lot of hours in it. Read my sarcasm at the end, please.
Even checking other projects, they either have a "substandard" browser
(but still better than us, read below) or you just use Firefox or Chrome
and both of them look badly and out of place everywhere and seem to be
fighting on who deteriorates the interface most.
- Vespucci builds, but due to the limited SimpleWebKit, it does not
pass the ACID2 level test.
That is known and will never happen. No CSS display support, no real JS.
On the other side of the medal, SWK is pure native and the most
promising approach.
Never a full browser, it is extremely useful for embedding, native and
quick. Display is fast, integration is total (copy-paste and you get
real attributed strings with no glitches).
It would allow Grr or GNUMail to display quickly HTML, same goas for
hypothetical embedded browsing.
Do you know why on Windows (or mac or GNOME) an app appears to kill your
computer? It might embed once or more a browser just for simple views.
I remember a business softphone installed in a company... just the about
panel had some animated clickable links: to render that they embedded
essentially a chromium frame. Absurd, overkill.. but probably quickly to
develop.
- gs-webbrowser (chromium) does not work anymore due to the new
security upgrade of chromium.
This (or a similar approach, like Berkelium tried with CEF) would be the
quickes approach, unfortunately, it will be also the one with the "worst
interface". But it is harder nowadays.
Microsoft surely did that when doing its Blink-based Edge since one can
see those webprocess starting from other apps.
For sure, direct integration, empedding, copy-pasting text will be
always inferior, but could be good enough.
There are two other ways I think about, but those are not in my skills
now:
1) New Web Browser upon LuaKit
- Luakit Web Browser uses C, Lua, Gtk and an up to date WebKit: see
https://luakit.github.io/ and https://github.com/luakit/luakit
Seems just a little bit contrived, doesn't it?
We could wrap WebKit directy instead. Either with Obj-C++ or in the past
somebody attempted an Obj-C wrapper... I was almost tempted to look at
it again, but don't remember why it stagnated and why it stopped. I
don't now if there was a big issue somewhere or if it was sheer manpower
issue tracking all the APIs and wrapping them.
I had limited success with wrapping C++ with xpdf updates without
requiring Obj-C++
There are other options... embedding gecko is today very hard. Camino
project (native mac look and integration) was stopped due to changes
exactly in that. But maybe still possible
I throw my bottle to the sea... Maybe people with the needed skills
could try and achieve this?
I could help testing.
Honestly? no... nobody does work on that. A bit of testing doesn't help.
It needs a lot of workforce.
Most people use Chrome and suffer, at most Firefox. Both are
company-screwed. All the rest is occasional developing.
When Nikolaus worked on SWK I tried to help, but beyond that no
interest, just criticism.
I maintain since years a Firefox/PaleMoon fork which is more compatible
with non-TIER1 platforms. Interest in it has grown a lot, I see
downloads, bugs... but no real help. Sometimes don't go the mile even
to compile and bisect an issue. Developers are scarce, especially in
that field. Lots of work, little reward.
Same goes with Seamonkey, a wonderful browser, the origin of Mozilla
itself, not a stepchild snobbed by the foundation itself and trailing
behind because Firefox needs to do its latest crap... Advertising, AI,
WebGPU or whaterver, forgetting its roots.
And one thing I learned from working on ArcticFox: the predominance of
Google has killed all webstandards, it is worse than IE times
essentially. In under a year, the requirements for many websites has
increased dramatically, weeding out everything which is not
latest-greatest and identifies with it. Not only sites like GitHub are
crazy with it, but also things like Cloudflare which are now put in
front of a lot of websites. Cloudflare provenly favors WebKit and Blink
browsers penalizing Firefox and anyway working only on latest. Try using
SeaMonkey or last year ESR and you are dead. Why they do that, I don't
know, it is extreme.
Sorry to sound so negative, because I am on this topic.
Riccardo
