Re: Introducing emacs-webkit and more thoughts on Emacs rendering (was Rethinking the design of xwidgets)

[Akira Kyle]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2020 at 05:50 AM, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> 
wrote:

> There are 2 types of questions for you, one group of questions 
> if for
> dynamic module emacs-webkit:
>
> - is it possible to make sure from start of the session not to 
> use
>   Javascript?

Yes,

(add-hook 'webkit-new-hook #'webkit-enable-javascript)

This should disable javascript on all 
sites. `webkit-enable-javascript` can be called interactively to 
disable javascript or enable if given a prefix arg. Although I 
just realized theres a bug here and the page load request will 
happen before the hook is applied. I'll fix this soon.

There's a thread on my post on reddit.com/r/emacs [1] where I talk 
a bit more about the process of disabling JS. To quote my comment 
there:

> > I should note that this sets the webkit 
> > `enable-javascript-markup` setting, not the 'enable-javascript' 
> > setting. I'm still figuring out how all these options are 
> > applied within webkit, but it seems like 
> > `enable-javascript-markup` disables a page from executing 
> > javascript by stripping it all out. `enable-javascript` would 
> > break the module since basic things like scrolling are handled 
> > by executing javascript in the view, which is allowed even if 
> > the page javascript is disabled with 
> > `enable-javascript-markup`. It seems like this is what email 
> > clients that use webkitgtk2 use since using javascript is 
> > really the only way to control the WebView given the WebKitDOM 
> > API is depricated. One could write the equavalent to 
> > window.scrollTo in C using the JavasScriptCore API but AFAIK 
> > that would be pretty much equivalent to what's currently 
> > happening.

> - is it maybe possible at compile time to add an option
>   --disable-javascript ?

I'm not sure if webkit has such an option to disable javascript 
and compile time. I think the JavaScriptCore must be present in 
order for webkit to even work.

> - is there way during the session to surely disable javascript?

See above.

> - it would be very nice if webkit dynamic module could bookmark
>   hyperlink in such a way that it can be programmatically 
>   captured by
>   using Emacs Lisp. For example by pressing B that users can 
>   capture
>   both the TITLE and URL together and store it how they 
>   wish. You
>   could provide standard function and one customizable 
>   function. That
>   way users could store the TITLE and URL without reloading the 
>   page
>   into database, or into Org file, or other system.

Currently C-l copies the url (open to suggestions on improvements 
to the default keybindings as I don't use them myself). And the 
title and url can be retrieved from the module with 
`webkit--get-uri` and `webkit--get-title`. I don't personally use 
emacs builtin bookmarks but enough people seem interested in such 
a feature that it'll happen.

> And some questions not related to the subject, rather to your 
> skills
> with dynamic modules:
>
> Developers of emacs-libpq will soon contribute the dynamic 
> module to
> GNU ELPA that offers bindings to PostgreSQL and that enhances 
> Emacs
> greatly with possibilities. Related to that in GNU there is GDBM 
> or
> GNU database https://www.gnu.org/s/gdbm
>
> I am just asking if you could think of programming the dynamic 
> module
> that offers to users Emacs interface to GDBM. This type of 
> database is
> much simpler and users most probably have it on their systems 
> and it
> can be used for business processes.
>
> Reference to emacs-libpq @ Github
> https://github.com/anse1/emacs-libpq

I'm not very knowledgeable about databases and don't directly 
interact them in my day-to-day so I don't have much of a personal 
motivation to work on such a problem thus I don't think I'm the 
right person for this project.

[1] 
https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jyowe0/introducing_emacswebkit_a_successor_to/