On 2/25/2012 7:05 AM, [email protected] wrote:
the first question is this: how the heck is it possible that i could create, in
under 3 weeks, an entire port of pyjamas-desktop to use the MSHTML IE engine,
*without* requiring access to the proprietary MSHTML Trident Engine?
The browser engine provided by Microsoft has a stable COM API. It also
does not require the embedder to handle any kind of persistent data
access: history/cache/cookie stores are handled via a single operating
system store which is shared across processes.
the key question is this: what is it about the microsoft technology that makes
this possible? this is not a rhetorical question. this is not a sarcastic
question. i genuinely require that you actually think, ben, and find out the
answer (hint: you already implement one. or used to. until it was pulled).
No, we didn't.
The ActiveX control provided an emulation layer which satisifed some of
the behaviors (allowing gecko to run in a process hidden behind at least
the basic set of Microsoft interfaces). But because we don't have any
form of cross-process profile sharing, the embedder either had to
configure and run their own profile directory (and think about the
consequences of only being able to use that datastore from one process
at a time) or run without any data store, which is not a well-tested
gecko configuration and will cause many websites to fail because cookies
and the cache do not behave correctly.
In addition, the primary way to access DOM nodes through the MS API is
via IDispatch, and the bridge between IDispach and COM typeinfo was
never complete and didn't match the Microsoft implementation in key
ways. The closest cross-platform equivalent we have to IDispatch is the
NPRuntime, which is pretty well tested but isn't efficient and has
inherent cycle issues.
and if microsoft can do it, why can't the mozilla foundation?
We *could* do it. But it would require significant engineering effort to
implement shared profile data, solve the IDispatch-or-equivalent problem
(especially if we needed it to be safe for object cycles via the cycle
collector), and then provide real QA and release resources for the
project. Since we are not prepared to do any of that at this time, it's
better to be perfectly clear about the situation then string embedders
along thinking that they have a better solution than they actually have.
--BDS
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