Re: [Texmacs-dev] TeXmacs gwt front-end

[Felix Breuer]

On Sat, 2006-12-02 at 14:40 +0100, Henri Lesourd wrote:
> This is just not realistic (although not completely infeasible). The
> information you gave me, as well as the previous thread discussing
> with Amir leads me to think that the Ajax-based implementation of
> an X-Windows-like layer would definitely be the way to go, as far
> as porting TeXmacs (and other X-Windows/MS-Windows interactive
> apps) to the web is cincerned. Something that would provide :
> 
> 1/ The ability to detect & reprogram events ;
> 2/ The ability to draw & to display fonts ;
> 3/ The ability to create subwindows ;
> 
> Currently, such a project appears to be feasible, but it is
> hard to obtain a very efficient/stable result. But given what
> you, along with others say, it seems definitely possible that
> at some point, the efficiency of such an "X-Web-Windows"
> implementation becomes comparable to what can be done
> in C++ on top of a classical Window manager. It is even
> rather probable, finally.

Well, there is SVG Terminal:

  http://networkimprov.net/airwrx/awscene.html

One interesting thought experiment:

* Suppose TeXmacs' PS-Device had a Cairo backend (which would be a very 
  useful thing to have in any case.)
* Cairo already has an SVG backend, suppose that backend could be made 
  to perform well. Suppose further it could be made to modify the SVG
  document incrementally.
* Serialize the Cairo's changes to the SVG Term protocol and you get a 
  TeXmacs-in-a-browser.

Well, yes this is science fiction as of now. But, maybe we could start
small and implement a cairo backend for TeXmacs...?  :)


Felix