[maemo-developers] Webkit based browser on N800

[From: Oliver Dole]

2007/7/28, Alp Toker <alp.toker at collabora.co.uk>:
>
> Oliver Dole wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > It's my pleasure to announce that we just released OWB, a webkit-based
> > browser which aim is to present an abstraction layer for different
> > parts of the browser architecture, making porting effort smoother and
> > faster.
> > For instance, we have an abstraction for network part (currently curl
> > based) or for graphics part (currently sdl based).
>
> WebKit already has an abstraction layer for networking backends, for
> which Mac, Qt, Win32 and curl (which I help maintain) ports exist. It
> also has an abstraction layer for drawing and graphics which has Qt, CG,
> Wx and Cairo (which I work on) implementations.
>
> Can you explain what's wrong with the existing abstraction layers?
> They've served us well.


>From my point of view, that's not a real abstraction layer. What about if
you want to switch from GTK to Qt => a whole recompilation of webcore ???
that's a bit annyoing... isn't it
At the code level: what about graphics context: a ifdef for MAC, another for
WIN32, another one for Qt.... In fact an ifdef for each implementation.
Whereas if you were using Interfaces, you would only have to add (if needed)
a specific private member in your specific implementation.
So that's true that current 'platform' directory is good... but I think that
it could be greatly improved.


> > This project is known to compile and run fine for N800... The drawback
> > is that the current port is SDL based. This implementation raises some
> > troubles like text input inside the browser which are for now
> > impossible since the keyboard does not show up.
> > If you want to have a look to OWB, you can check
> http://www.sand-labs.org/owb/
> > To checkout the sources: svn checkout
> http://www.sand-labs.org/svn/trunk/
> > Further information on how to compile OWB for N800 can be found at
> > this location: http://www.sand-labs.org/owb/wiki/OwbN800
> >
> > We also  plan to start a GTK port in order to get OWB running on
> > GTK/Hildon but I don't really have a timeframe about that, so if some
> > people are willing to see webkit on N800 / GTK, please show up, any
> > help is greatly encouraged :)
>
> We have been working on porting WebKit to Gtk+ for some time. The source
> code is available at svn.webkit.org since we work directly with the
> upstream code base rather than branching it. If you made your branch
> five months ago, it's possible you've missed out on a lot of development
> to enhance WebKit on mobile platforms.


I know... but merging take a lot of time...
And I don't think that if I come on WebKit IRC or mailing list and I say "I
have a 5Mo patch which will break your architecture but improve it" they
will tell me "great, you are welcome" :p
I think we have to prove that our approach works and may be better than the
current one to hope seeing our approach being merged.
So our goal is not to do another fork of Webkit... If we can merge into the
trunk we would be really happy. Nonetheless I do not think that it will
happen in the next days...

Regards,

Olivier DOLE

WebKit/Gtk+ builds and runs fine on the N800. Integration work with
> Hildon and Nokia's EAL (Engine Abstraction Layer) is ongoing, and we're
> encouraging its adoption by the GNOME mobile community.
>
> Regards.
>



-- 
Olivier DOLE
Pleyo
Software Engineer
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