Re: [MiNT] Announce of an early netsurf framebuffer alpha / polipo proxy rpm

["m0n0" <ole@monochrom.net>]

Am Mi, 4.08.2010, 21:15 schrieb Peter Slegg:

> In simple terms (if possible) how do you go about converting Netsurf
> to GEM ?
>
> Presumaby you want to do it so that future releases do not require too
> much work or will it be a case of importing Netsurf changes into the
> GEM version ?

As you maybe know, there are several ports of NetSurf. All of these ports
have a different GUI and not every port has the same features.

These features ( like printing, bookmarking, caching to disk, persistent
cookies, reading options, etc.) are supported by an common code base
accessible to all of the ports. All the ports share the same layout
engine, but they don't share gui / drawing code. Changes to the layout
engine and changes in networking code or changes in parsing, css or
language support are shared by all of the ports. But not every ports
implements all of the features available.

The implementation of GUI code and "usage" of new browser engine code is
up to the specific port.
I think the hardest part will be the implementation of the website form
controls like checkboxes, textboxes, lists (including their event
handling).
Maybe it's better to have an look how the windows/GTK versions implemented
such stuff, in the framebuffer version all of these controls are implented
as OS independet widgets...

Example:
If there are GUI changes in the GTK version (like an button to print the
webpage), this changes will not carried across other versions, but the
method "print_page" (ok, that's to simple) is probably available to every
port.

About the webpage Form elements:
Maybe the dynamic forms engine ( an addition to winDom ) is good for this
purpose, but that is just a guess. Another approach would be an resource
tree that contains all the needed Web Form elements. Then, no matter from
where the Form element definition came, draw it with objc_draw...
Another approach would be to look how highwire has done that stuff :)

Hope that has answered your questions.

Greets,
m0n0

> Peter