What if we created a new project, based off of ICU called lilICU ..
would the WebKit community then accept an alternative binding to this
new library?
Not to split hairs, but that is essentially what it seems that we would
have to do, create a new library, before the WebKit community becomes
interested in ways of trimming down WebKit for embedded devices where
the resource impositions of dependent libraries are significant.
Having worked at porting WebKit to a variety of embedded platforms over
the last five years (most of the work non-recontributable due to lack of
interest in esoteric and non-mainstream platforms) the size of a typical
WebKit build has grown significantly while the number of tuning options
has decreased.
Thanks,
Thomas
Glenn Adams wrote:
On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 3:15 AM, Salisbury, Mark <mark.salisb...@hp.com
<mailto:mark.salisb...@hp.com>> wrote:
Hello,
What would people think about including specific ICU data tables in
WTF in order to provide a lightweight (but functional) unicode
implementation?
FWIW, I'd suggest you port ICU to your platform or if the size is too
large, port the portion of it that WK uses, and then use that portion.
However, I think the ICU library or even a subset should NOT be added to
WTF.
On embedded systems the size of ICU is prohibitive. Determining the
right way to package it to make it small enough isn't simple either.
A patch was reviewed once that attempted to add ICU data tables
directly in WTF and there were two concerns:
1) Checking in generated files
(https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27305#c8)
2) Questions concerning if the ICU license is compatible with
WebCore (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27305#c9)
I believe the patch could be done differently as to not check in
generated files. Regarding the second concern, ICU has a very
permissive license
(http://www.icu-project.org/repos/icu/icu/trunk/license.html).
There are three requirements, basically that the copyright and
permission notice has to appear with copies of the software. I
believe that is already a requirement for distributions of webkit
that use ICU. Except for WChar unicode, I believe all webkit builds
now use ICU Unicode.
This Unicode path could replace WCHAR_UNICODE or be introduced as a
third option, call it what you like - BASIC_ICU_UNICODE,
ICU_LITE_UNICODE, COMPACT_ICU_UNICODE, etc.. I think it might be
valuable for other ports that are size conscious - the up and coming
NIX port comes to mind.
Thanks,
Mark
Background:
After rebasing my WinCE port of webkit, I ran into an ASSERT in
WebCore/platform/text/wchar/TextBreakIteratorWchar.cpp,
acquireLineBreakIterator(). I thought I'd be able to easily fix
this, since I had already modified how LineBreakIterator works to
take prior context into account (on my own branch) and find line
break in a stream of non-ASCII characters.
However, the WCHAR Unicode implementation is very bare bones and
does not even support returning the Unicode character category
(http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WTF/wtf/unicode/wchar/UnicodeWchar.cpp#L35).
WCHAR Unicode was originally called WinCE Unicode, then it was
properly renamed as it had nothing to do with WinCE.
WinCE Unicode originally came in here:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27305. The reason it was
introduced was to save space (filesystem and RAM). ICU, if not
packaged very carefully
(http://userguide.icu-project.org/packaging), is actually larger
than webkit itself. On embedded systems, this is a big deal. The
original plan with the bug above was to include specific ICU data
tables in webkit.
I've been compiling WTF with Unicode tables embedded for some time
now. I don't believe I've seen many layout test regressions due to
using a simplified ICU implementation.
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