Re: [dev] Talk about sane web browsers

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009 21:35:50 +0200
markus schnalke <meillo_AT_marmaro.de> wrote:

>
> Read my slides, I clearly state this: Take the broken render engine as
> black box and add sane interfaces around.
>
(..)
>
> It's the web browser that complies better with the Unix Philosophy
> than any other I've seen. Only the render engine sucks (of course).
> But it may get exchanged ... it's only a black box anyway.
>
>
> meillo

"black box" may be just a bit too far, but generally I think yes,
if the library you depend on works, and you only need to work with it, not on it,
then it doesn't matter much how ugly or big the codebase is. (as long as the api is reasonable).

I definitely wouldn't like to work on webkitgtk+ because of the complex codebase, but I don't have to...
There are other people maintaining it and they seem to handle it okay.

> P.S.
> I see `uzbl' as an example. It may not exactly be as I describe it.
> (In fact, it has it's dark corners. E.g. `--geometry'.)
>
> There might also be other browsers that are similar (surf).

I did a lot of research before starting uzbl. I couldn't find any browser that matched what I was looking for.
(surf came after uzbl)

Dieter
Received on Mon Sep 07 2009 - 19:47:11 UTC