Re: [dev] surf rewrite for WebKit2GTK

From: Daniel Camolês <bigatojj_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 16:29:58 -0200

When the choice you have is between 500k or 2 million lines of code,
it hurts to call anything suckless. I think the web needs a serious
reboot. It started out as a markup language for presentation-only, and
then it was morphed through a convoluted series of additions into an
application distribution plataform. The browser is the dumb terminal
of our days. Today the web browser is the most awful piece of software
I need to use. I dream with the day when the Internet will be built
around a model simple and generic enough that a reasonable programmer
will be able to code a complete "browser" in a month of work or so.

Am I alone? Is there any hope out there?

Document distribution seems easy. Hyperlinking was an wonderful idea,
but it's not complicated. But when it comes to application
distribution. By application distribution I mean, when we want to
develop and maintain software in a central location and enable several
users with a generic client to use it. I know that we have ssh and
mainframe terminal applications, but those are not something most
people are willing to use.

Answering your question about netsurf, I think the point is that it
doesn't currently run javascript. I think that is good thing, but most
site developers in the world doesn't. Also, netsurf developers also
intend to implement javascript at some point. But today for a lot of
sites you have to stick with one of the three main rendering engines.

2014-10-25 15:41 GMT-02:00 F Hssn <fhssn1_AT_gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 6:54 AM, Quentin Rameau <quinq.ml_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi, I tried to port surf for the webkit2 (WebKitGTK 2.6 / GTK3), here
>> is the code:
>> git://quinq.eu.org/surf2
>> There will be some bugs, feel free to try it, feedback welcomed.
>
> Noob question (joined the list a couple months ago),
>
> Since surf, uzbl, jumanji etc are minimal browsers in terms of UI's,
> is the GTK version of webkit (as opposed to directly using Webkit)
> used primarily for providing widget functionality to HTML? (so that
> widgets can be embedded in a webpage).
>
> Following suckless's minimal philosophy, I'd be interested to find out
> if someone has done analysis on how an even minimal browser could be
> developed in terms of SLOC, since webkit (r172694) stands at ~2
> million lines, 75% of which is C++, while webkitgtk-1.10.2 is ~1
> million, 90% C++. I used cloc. I'm surprised webkitgtk is smaller than
> latest webkit.
>
> Furthermore, since webkit is C++, I found (through wikipedia) a
> project called netsurf, which is a browser written in C (~0.5 million
> total, 50% is C). I wonder if anyone has considered that.
>
> Thanks and regards,
> FH
>
Received on Sat Oct 25 2014 - 20:29:58 CEST