nanogui: Thread: Small open source web browser introduced

A project I've been working very hard on has finally come 
to fruition: The ViewML Project's open source browser
targetted specifically towards embedded Linux systems
and Internet Appliances.  www.viewml.com

I thought I'd share a little behind-the-scenes info about
what's been going on and what we're trying to do.  As the
maintainer of Microwindows as well as the chief strategist
for MontaVista's gui strategies, I've been giving talks around
the country for the last three months, showing Microwindows'
architecture, talking about the new micro-X build in Xfree86,
and other developments.  At the end of the talks, I was always
beseiged with requests for a good open source browser that
could run on these systems and not use much memory.  I would
talk about Opera, which is closed source but runs on X and
Microwindows (not released yet), and mention Netscape/Mozilla,
which is open source but huge.  I realized that there really wasn't
a solution.

So I created one.  With MontaVista and my company Century
Software's backing, we've created a first release v0.1.  We 
evaluated most all open source HTML display widgets looking
foremost for high-quality HTML display, and secondly, being
somewhat small and well written.  We came up with KDE's kfm 
widget as the best choice.  It is extremely well written, but expects 
the Qt widget set underneath.  Qt is too large.  We wrote a thin
glue layer that translates Qt calls into FLTK calls (both toolkits
are written in C++).  FLTK was chosen because it is quite small,
and most importantly runs on both X and Microwindows (we're
using the Nano-X multiple client/server API).  We then wrote
a very thin user interface (this needs more work) that allows
a user to operate the display engine, essentially.

We initially thought that we had about another 5 days to put
some polish on the rev 0.1 source, but the story is hot and
people want to know about it.  The current 0.1 release is
quite rough, and still has some issues relating to url parsing.
We should have some screen shots up later today.  Additionally
the 0.1 release has a minor uncaught X dependency that prevents
it's linking with Microwindows.  These issues will be fixed over
the weekend and made available as another tarball on Monday.
We're also going to be bringing up a CVS next week.

We feel very good about the HTML engine display capabilities
and small RAM usage of the design.  There's going to be a bit
of work figuring out the best way of allowing customization of
this browser.  For instance, it's well suited for 320x240 screens
because of it's lack of many user interface features, but we'll want
to add more buttons/functions for use on a web pad.  So we're open
to discussion on how this should be designed for maximal use by
the open source community.

We've started a mailing list for ViewML, details are on the
web site.

Regards,

Greg

+----[ Greg Haerr ]---------------------------------------------
|
| A project I've been working very hard on has finally come 
| to fruition: The ViewML Project's open source browser
| targetted specifically towards embedded Linux systems
| and Internet Appliances.  www.viewml.com

Is it supposed to compile? Or is it more of a "this is where we're at"
preview ?

I've had to hack makefiles to get includes from where I think they're supposed
to be (QT stuff) I don't have a khtmlw directory e.g. so I assume you're
building with native QT installed or you have different Makefiles to those
distributed.

When I point an include dir at src/fltk to pick up the QT stuff...

c++ -I../khtmlw/fltk -I../src/fltk -I..  -O -pipe -c -o cpp2bison.o cpp2bison.cpp
In file included from jsexec.h:29,
                 from jstree.h:69,
                 from cpp2bison.cpp:21:
../src/fltk/qlist.h:14: ANSI C++ forbids declaration `append' with no type

mmm Templates...

gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)

-- 
Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet|  P:+61 7 3870 0066   | Andrew Milton
The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd          |  F:+61 7 3870 4477   | 
ACN: 082 081 472 ABN: 83 082 081 472 |  M:+61 416 022 411   | Carpe Daemon
PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068    ####@####.#### 

On Sat Jul 15, 2000 at 12:05:28PM +1000, Andrew Kenneth Milton wrote:
> +----[ Greg Haerr ]---------------------------------------------
> |
> | A project I've been working very hard on has finally come 
> | to fruition: The ViewML Project's open source browser
> | targetted specifically towards embedded Linux systems
> | and Internet Appliances.  www.viewml.com
> 
> Is it supposed to compile? Or is it more of a "this is where we're at"
> preview ?
> 
> I've had to hack makefiles to get includes from where I think they're supposed
> to be (QT stuff) I don't have a khtmlw directory e.g. so I assume you're
> building with native QT installed or you have different Makefiles to those
> distributed.

There is a 'make depend' target that _rewrites_ the Makefile (Yuck).
It would be much, much cleaner IMHO to use something like
depend:
    $(CC) $(INCLUDE_DIRS) -MM *.c > .depend

to create a .depend file, and include that with a 
    include .depend
line.

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   Web:    http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/ 
                   email:  ####@####.####
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--

+----[ Erik Andersen ]---------------------------------------------
|
| There is a 'make depend' target that _rewrites_ the Makefile (Yuck).
| It would be much, much cleaner IMHO to use something like
| depend:
|     $(CC) $(INCLUDE_DIRS) -MM *.c > .depend
| 
| to create a .depend file, and include that with a 
|     include .depend
| line.

It doesn't work...

It's complaining about a lot of missing include files, including X includes
(which I don't want to link to)...

Something need some work I think before release...

------------------------------------------------------------------------
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qstring.h, line 4): cannot find include file "algo.h"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qstring.h, line 5): cannot find include file "string"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qarray.h, line 4): cannot find include file "vector"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qstrlist.h, line 8): cannot find include file "vector"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qlist.h, line 4): cannot find include file "vector"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qobject.h, line 7): cannot find include file "iostream.h"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/fltk-qbase.h, line 23): cannot find include file "X11/X.h"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/fltk-qbase.h, line 24): cannot find include file "X11/Xlib.h"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qpainter.h, line 14): cannot find include file "iostream.h"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qstack.h, line 4): cannot find include file "stack"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qstack.h, line 5): cannot find include file "vector"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qdict.h, line 5): cannot find include file "map"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp (reading ./fltk/qwidget.h, line 13): cannot find include file "iostream.h"
makedepend: warning:  html.cpp, line 57: cannot find include file "X11/Xlib.h"
------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
Totally Holistic Enterprises Internet|  P:+61 7 3870 0066   | Andrew Milton
The Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd          |  F:+61 7 3870 4477   | 
ACN: 082 081 472 ABN: 83 082 081 472 |  M:+61 416 022 411   | Carpe Daemon
PO Box 837 Indooroopilly QLD 4068    ####@####.#### 

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, Greg Haerr wrote:

> So I created one.  With MontaVista and my company Century
> Software's backing, we've created a first release v0.1.  We 
> evaluated most all open source HTML display widgets looking
> foremost for high-quality HTML display, and secondly, being
> somewhat small and well written.  We came up with KDE's kfm 
> widget as the best choice.  It is extremely well written, but expects 
> the Qt widget set underneath.  Qt is too large.  We wrote a thin
> glue layer that translates Qt calls into FLTK calls (both toolkits
> are written in C++).  FLTK was chosen because it is quite small,
> and most importantly runs on both X and Microwindows (we're
> using the Nano-X multiple client/server API).  We then wrote
> a very thin user interface (this needs more work) that allows
> a user to operate the display engine, essentially.


Argh. You just tied yourself to code that will have no development
whatsoever in the future. Why not use KDE2's widget? It's much better.

 ("\''/").__..-''"`-. .         Roberto Alsina
 `9_ 9  )   `-. (    ).`-._.`)  ####@####.####
 (_Y_.)' ._   ) `._`.  " -.-'   Director técnico
  _..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.'           Conectiva SA
(l)-'' ((i).' ((!.'             Buenos Aires - Argentina
                                KDE Developer (MFCH)
"The stone age didn't end for a lack of stone" Firoz Rasul

>... Qt is too large.  We wrote a thin
> glue layer that translates Qt calls into FLTK calls (both toolkits
> are written in C++).  FLTK was chosen because it is quite small,
> and most importantly runs on both X and Microwindows (we're
> using the Nano-X multiple client/server API).  We then wrote
> a very thin user interface (this needs more work) that allows
> a user to operate the display engine, essentially.

Is this being open-sourced? If it is then it'd certainly help with a project I'm
working on - I'd expact a lot of other people would like this as well - I just
checked out qt-embedded and it's, well, really sucky (talk about slow! this is
ridiculous...  Could save you a lot of maintainence time....

Rob Taylor

: Is this being open-sourced? If it is then it'd certainly help with a
project I'm
: working on - I'd expact a lot of other people would like this as well - I
just
: checked out qt-embedded and it's, well, really sucky (talk about slow!
this is
: ridiculous...  Could save you a lot of maintainence time....


The ViewML Project's entire purpose is to maintain and develop
a free, open source browser targetted for embedded Linux systems.

When people talk about browsers, typically they want everything,
java, javascript, html 4.0, all images, email reader, news etc etc.
We're trying to create a browser with the following priorities:

    1. Totally open source and free
    2. Complete HTML display capabilities (currently v3.2)
    3. Small disk and ram usage
    4. Reconfigurable user interface (FLTK now)
    5. Some JavaScript

Regards,

Greg

> > and most importantly runs on both X and Microwindows (we're
> > using the Nano-X multiple client/server API).  We then wrote
> > a very thin user interface (this needs more work) that allows
> > a user to operate the display engine, essentially.
> 
> 
> Argh. You just tied yourself to code that will have no development
> whatsoever in the future. Why not use KDE2's widget? It's much better.

Well to be fair

1.	The KDE2 widget is (or 2 weeks ago was) buggier than Mozilla at its
	worst

2.	If you look how the port has been done you should be able to drop
	the KDE2 widget into the same Qt wrapper magic without much work
	when its ready

Alan

On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, Alan Cox wrote:

> > > and most importantly runs on both X and Microwindows (we're
> > > using the Nano-X multiple client/server API).  We then wrote
> > > a very thin user interface (this needs more work) that allows
> > > a user to operate the display engine, essentially.
> > 
> > 
> > Argh. You just tied yourself to code that will have no development
> > whatsoever in the future. Why not use KDE2's widget? It's much better.
> 
> Well to be fair
> 
> 1.	The KDE2 widget is (or 2 weeks ago was) buggier than Mozilla at its
> 	worst

Well, it's in development. A month ago it worked very well, some fixes
caused some (big) trouble. They should get fixed soon.

> 2.	If you look how the port has been done you should be able to drop
> 	the KDE2 widget into the same Qt wrapper magic without much work
> 	when its ready

And why not cooperate with the guys who are developing? I mean, this is
the third fork from that codebase, so it's reasonable to assume it's the
better one around. Why not cooperate to make it better instead of forking?

 ("\''/").__..-''"`-. .         Roberto Alsina
 `9_ 9  )   `-. (    ).`-._.`)  ####@####.####
 (_Y_.)' ._   ) `._`.  " -.-'   Director técnico
  _..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.'           Conectiva SA
(l)-'' ((i).' ((!.'             Buenos Aires - Argentina
                                KDE Developer (MFCH)
"The stone age didn't end for a lack of stone" Firoz Rasul

On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, Alan Cox wrote:

> 2.	If you look how the port has been done you should be able to drop
> 	the KDE2 widget into the same Qt wrapper magic without much work
> 	when its ready

Is there a reason that gtkhtml wasn't used?

Brief pokings around suggest to me that it's a little bit
lighter.

Of course, gtk+ would probably be harder to wrap than Qt.

Matthew.