Alex, Ben, Thanks for the comments. I haven't replied sooner because a colleague and I have been busy rebilding Mozilla and getting to grips with the basics of embedding so that we could investigate a few issues with a view to putting together a simple Mozilla based app. This has brought to light a number of issues and it is difficult to know where to start while keeping on the topic of documentation. We hit difficulties straight away because our requirement of embedding seems to be completely different to most of those who have provided examples and basic 'how-to' descriptions. To set the scene, our overall requirement is to produce a cross-platform app that requires an absolute minimum of wrapping/rebuilding in order to achieve the cross-platform capability. Our approach is to provide a platform specific executable that binds the mre to a single, simple window and have the content provided by XUL/XBL and custom XPComm interfaces. The app needs to be skinable and permit localization. On the basis of the above you will appreciate that the ActiveX control was ruled out immediately as was the MFCExample. The latter is little more than 'how to roll your own windows browser', we are not even that interested in browsing capability, just using the mre as a cross-platform application framework...so why embed that inside another framework that is windows specific? The WinEmbed example apperaed to be useful starting point for the Windows version but is deprecated, didn't build and, when succesfully coerced to build, crashed when executed. We now know why it crashed but only figured it out after deciding to start from first principles...ie.e with a virtually winmain! Since then matters have not improved. As an example let us consider the contents.rdf file. There are plenty of examples around of what a simple one should look like if our app only wants a 'content' sub-directory but all go very quiet when we want to add skinning and locale support; How should the contents.rdf file be modified to support these? One example simply tells us to look at the jar file for the classic skin...all very well but where is the full description of the structure of the contents.rdf file, where is the syntax definition for this particular form of RDF file? At present we are making extremely slow headway having to sift through documents and examples for any scrap of information that will point us in the right direction. What WE really need to see is clarity and differentiation in the various methods in which embedding can be achieved and for each category an 'embedding for dummies' guide explaining the structure of the app and how to get started. We also require a very clear description of how the chrome works and how it needs to be configured for a skinnable, localizable application. The current guides are excellent for those who require a very basic and simple overview but for practical purpose are over-simplistic by an astonishing degree. The technically details descriptions available seem to jump to how apply chrome, particularly RDF to datasources and thus bypass the intermediate level that we need.
There is more, much more...and the above is NOT intended to be a criticism or a specific request for help. It is supplied as a preliminary description of the sort of difficulties that we are facing as application developers. The problem is that I am not sure that the current documentation effort is really intended to cover this sort of information. Having read many other postings on this group I feel that there are some who would consider our requirement to be something that Mozilla was never intended to address and therefore irrelevant. That would be a shame and it would also represent a gross understatement of an otherwise excellent piece of work. The embedding group have a long way to go before they can achieve their ultimate objective and I suppose that makes it difficult for them and yourselves in the documentation group to provide the those of us who are chomping at the bit with what we really need. I welcome your comments. Bob Wilson Software Development Manager Games Network Limited Nottingham, England Ben Tremblay wrote: > Bob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... > >>Alexander J. Vincent wrote: >><Section omitted> >> >>>Care to help us out with documenting it? :) :) >> >>I just know that I probably shouldn't say this but...yes. I am willing >>to help out wherever I can. > > *Intelligently reticent!* > > >>>You know, feedback from people like you is PRECISELY what we in >>>Documentation need the most. [...] We need feedback from the >>>business community which hopes to develop Mozilla-based products. We >>>really don't have any sense of what documentation is needed for them. >> >>[...] I am reading through the 'embedding' documentation at present >>which, as you will appreciate from my previous posting, is MY primary >>area of interest. I have some ideas and comments forming and will gladly >>throw these into the melting pot. [...] > > I'm sure a statement of needs from your perspective would be quite > revealing, and very useful even if tightly focussed on embedding (a > report of snags, shortcomings, and gaps encountered by an experienced > OEM would be hard to beat for validity). > > >>Bob > > hfx_ben
