From: WHS <whs@xs4all.nl>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 17:28:36 +0000

GTK port? (Re: web browser for ggi)

teunis wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Tristan Wibberley wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Sep 22, 1999 at 08:32:34PM +0100, Justin Cormack wrote:
> > > Has anyone tried building a web browser for ggi? I was
> > > thinking just of something to render html (perhaps based
> > > on Mozilla's rendering engine?) onto a ggi target,
> > > though a full web browser would be useful too.
> >
> > The easiest way to port mozilla is to write a mozilla gfx widget
> > implementation which uses libGGI.
> >
> > To support windowing for one application you could just put a taskbar at
> > the bottom and switch between otherwise full screen mozilla windows. This
> > would be a useful generic kiosk library.
> 
> As a mite of a bit of curiousity - has anyone looked at how possible it
> is?


I mentioned this before to some people: Why not port gtk, or rather gdk
which is currently X11 based? I've looked at the source and it shouldn't
be too difficult. What it needs though is libgwt like functionality
(regions, window stacking etc.) 

On a related note:

Wed, 10 Nov 1999 10:50:57 -0500 (EST) Bryan Patrick Coleman wrote:

>         Also I am writting a set of libraries that are along the same
> lines as ggi. Except for windowing ideas. Basicaly my goal is to make a
> lib than you can write for that will "target" diverse windowing tool kits.
> For example you write a game that will use GTK++ in x-window (or Xggi) and
> something else if its on the console. Or even the netscape widowing tk if
> exicuted from withing netscape. There will be two libs for this. liboui
> (pronouced lib-we) that will be primitive windowing concepts. Then a
> liboctopus which will be a tk that will handel higher level windowing
> concepts. liboctopus will use ggi for its graphics calls but liboui will
> be its own thang and not really handle graphics at all.
> 
>         I guess I am posting this here to see if A. any one is interested
> in this and if possibly it could in the end become part of ggi and B. more
> importantly if anyone wants to help.

Abstracting complex toolkits like gtk & QT is probably not useful,
unless the new API is one of the original toolkits. However, this does
not look worth the effort to me (I did do something like this at lower
lever for X11 (windows, palette's, gc's etc) and using my own smaller
widget set written for a specific app. (to actually run on GGI directly
I'd need libgwt like functionalilty). It gives a nice abstraction but
highlevel stuff is more difficult as things can be done quite
differently on a high level making them 'incompatible' (i.e. a single
abstraction could mean incorporating multiple methods)).

Porting gdk to GGI/gwt (possibly needing a rewrite of gwt) seems a
better idea. If others want to help I'll work on it too.


Wouter