> From: Carlitos Esquer <[email protected]> > Subject: > To: [email protected] > Message-ID: > <CAGHDjo+ydcGt2ym+DX9MMCa5NNi7pLA=utdqah8ewbfprs1...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Hello folks: > > I'm interested in develop javascrtip for netsurf, but besides that i 've > got another proposal for you. > Why don't develop a browser with another script language.
hi carlos, you need to look up the success rate of the efforts to add other languages to web browsers, first. here are some ways in which that has been achieved, along with an assessment: * adobe flash. it's the obvious one: it doesn't interact with the DOM, it entirely takes over. it's the number one cause of instability on macosx, it's the scourge of the internet and that god it's dying. * java: same thing. should never have been allowed :) * microsoft silverlight. this one *does* allow interaction with the DOM, and it has resulted in things like iron ruby and iron python gaining access to the DOM, and enabling "script language=xyz". unfortunately, it's IE only - i'd hate to rate anyone's chances of getting this to work under wine with Mono. * the mozilla foundation's sponsorship of pyxpcomext. pyxpcomext was very successful... technically. however it embedded the *entire* python runtime as a whopping 10mbyte plugin into firefox... and firefox *only*. the windows build process of pyxpcomext and its matching plugin "pydom" is a complete bitch. * google's "dart" initiative. this has *two* prongs. a) to add dart natively (DOM access) b) to add a "temporary" fix by creating a language translator - dart-to-javascript. * the python-based "grail" browser, which was a very early web browser that inspired much of the SAX, DOM and SGML parsing code that is now in python. it was designed to, yes, you guessed it: allow python scripts to be downloaded and executed, but they quickly realised that the concept would not gain significant acceptance. > We can use ruby, > which is one of those languages, in my humble opinion, created for the job. > May it will be revolutionary as Rails. May be not, but we can try. i do not know if you are familiar with free software, but the general rule of any free software project, the "we" has to be "you", primarily. you need to be the one that takes the initiative, and if it is interesting to others and aligns with their personal goals, they are likely to join in and help you out. in this case however it would not matter *which* web browser project you picked, i would not rate your chances of anyone assisting you as being particularly high. you might therefore wish instead to look up the rubyjs project: http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyjs rubyjs was the beginnings of a port of GWT to ruby, being inspired by the pyjamas project which james tauber had created. amazing guy, he is. anyway: the point is that you have javascript, and err... that's about it. anything else simply doesn't have the mindshare. you really have to have a damn good reason to run anything other than javascript with DOM, and absolutely the only really fully comprehensive and i mean 100% comprehensive project i know of which has any reason to squeak absolutely 100% out of the entire DOM API using a language *other* than javascript is the pyjamas-desktop project. to bring that home: i spoke to eric of the MS IE team. he had *never* heard of any project *ever* requiring and making full 100% usage of the DOM API in Trident, until i created pyjamas-desktop's mshtml port. the reason for that is because pyjamas-desktop utilises the DOM in order to create a GUI toolkit API: it really does need evvverything. i don't even rate google dart's chances of success and adoption as being particularly high, and that's funded by google's resources _and_ they created a dart-to-js compiler, because they not only have to get it adopted in google chrome, but also they have to get it adopted in Internet Explorer _and_ firefox _and_ opera - all major web browser engines over which they have *no* control. all that having been said.... :) .... if you are still interested then yes, technically, it is a fascinating technical area with enormous potential to bring the power of HTML+DOM to other programming languages, and i am looking forward to seeing some documentation and a roadmap from the netsurf team on how javascript is to be added to netsurf (not least because those plans will affect how others (such as carlos) might successfully add other programming language bindings to netsurf's DOM, but also because it is an interesting technical challenge in itself). i also particularly look forward to helping the netsurf team once they have made a decision either to utilise a pre-existing middleware framework, or to learning from them should they choose to develop their own middleware. should the netsurf team choose to create their own middleware, then given the technical competence of the netsurf team members i know for a fact that it will be absolutely superb and i really look forward to learning from it and extracting the code from the netsurf project in order to use it in other free software projects in the future. l.
