Re: Plans for ahead

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> Hi Greg,
>
> Am 04.12.2015 um 08:04 schrieb Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com>:
>
> > Nikolaus,
> >
> > There are many reasons why SWK is behind:
> >
> > 1) It has a very large head start...
> > 2) WebKit has critical mass.
> > 3) Tons of people are contributing to it and, more importantly, testing it
> > 4)  it is well known and widely used.
> Yes, you are right. But all those arguments also hold for the whole GNUstep
> project compared to anything else. But do we stop it for any of these reasons?

Exactly, these arguments come up over and over again. Hy don't we use 
GTK directly? or Windows or Mac?
where do you draw a line?

> Well, where could we be today if there had been just 10 contributions per month
> in the past ~5 years since I presented SWK the last time at FOSDEM...
>
> For the same reasons I have reduced the number of my contributions to GNUstep...

I think then I would be be browsing GNUstep's Documentation on my letux 
400 :)
And you could display search for "GNUstep" in duckduckgo.com (at least 
in the conveniently provided non-JS version) on your OpenMoko or your 
wonderful "tablet" I still remember.

> >    SWK is
> > missing many critical features, not the least of which is javascript
> > support.
> It has some rudimentary JS support (ECMAscript = JS)... E.g.
>
> http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/gnustep/libs/simplewebkit/trunk/Sources/ECMAScriptParser.m?revision=37330&view=markup
>
> But indeed nothing which works for doing anything useful.
> Mainly the connection between JS and the DOM trees is missing.

For the real usage I envision in short-term for SWK, better CSS and Form 
support is actually more important than JS I think. Although some 
rudimentary JS is very convenient.

> I am not saying "no" to alternate approaches. Yes, please go ahead!
>
> If SWK is enough pain so that someone eventually provides a really better 
> browser,
> SWK has reached its goal :)

Isn't there place for two or more engines in the world? If you like 
warship, you may love a Bismarck [1]. But I bet they aren't for 
everything! you need a small fast boat like a Riva Aquarama [2] too! 
Then you sure enjoy a tour on the lake.
Does it have 12 superheated boilers to travel at 30 knots using 150.000 
HP? No, but it traveled at 45 knots! and the Mahogany is perhaps more 
comfortable than hardened steel. It doesn't carry 4 planes either, but 
perhaps you can have a bottle of champagne and a woman at your side.
Your choice. And we can have both in your yard.
By discussing the way we do we won't have probably anything or end at 
most with a cargo ship.

Discussions to "plan ahead" are nice, as well as sharing opinions is. 
But these kind of threads aren't of good. They end up offending existing 
developers, stirring up souls and reducing commits.

Riccardo

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riva_Aquarama