torios team mailing list archive

[Israel Dahl <israeldahl@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/7/20 9:01 AM, ml@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Some options for quick scripted application development include the usual
> dialog/xdialog and bash route.  dialog can be built using pdcurses and can
> work with any backend pdcurses works with.  That means you could
> potentially use it with Wayland/SDL.  There are several GTK based
> dialog-like solutions.  The best of those in my opinion is yad (
> https://github.com/v1cont/yad ).  Works with GTK 3 and is currently
> supported.  Also provides the most options for controls.  There are dialog
> like programs for GUIs like Qt and WxWidgets as well.  Some distributions
> are using TCL/TK for dialogs and scripts.  Others are using lua.  Python
> has also become popular of late.  Another solution some users are
> interested in is a hypertext one using HTML/CSS/JavaScript similar to
> Microsoft's HTAs (hypertext applications).  There are some ways to
> accomplish that like Electron.js and NW.js.
>
> I brought up the web browser because it's probably a good example of a
> worst case scenario.  There are already some Linux distributions and many
> alternative FLOSS distributions that are having trouble finding and
> supporting a browser that can handle the majority of the Web 2.0 sites out
> there.  There are two FLTK/webkit browsers, netrider and fifth.  I did
> some patching for netrider and did manage to build it from source.  It's
> not exactly easy to build webkit with all its dependencies from source. 
> Both browsers are using older versions of webkit.  While these browsers
> work better than many independently developed FLOSS browsers that are not
> Mozilla or webkit based, they have issues with many sites.  Also, webkit
> source code is not exactly the most portable code.  I had issues that
> prevented building just when I changed versions of my gnu compiler so
> switching from 64 bit to 32 bit if 32 bit is no longer officially
> supported may not be easy.  The option mentioned most often on the
> suckless.org mailing list is surf which is GTK (now 3) and webkit.
>
> The WhatWG group took over managing the web standards from the W3C.  W3C
> was an independent organization that was interested in accessiblity. 
> WhatWG is made up mostly of businesses and organizations that develop
> browsers.  They tend to push the interests of their particular business or
> organization.  They've added standards to support semantic web so web
> sites will work more effectively on devices/phones with no keyboards. 
> They've added more multimedia support for formats like those used on
> Google's Youtube so that add ons like Flash are no longer needed.  That
> moves the complexity of video and audio support to the browser.  They've
> added webGL for 3D/VR/AR support.  Another new innovation is webrtc which
> can be used for video conferencing.  The FLOSS video conferencing project
> Jitsi uses webrtc and does not work in browsers unable to support the
> protocol.  Right now, it's pretty much just Google Chrome and Mozilla
> Firefox that offer it.  Even Firefox is having some issues with
> implementing webrtc although future versions are supposed to support the
> protocol better.  Webkit was developed by Apple, Google and independent
> FLOSS projects.  Google's now working on Blink instead of webkit and many
> projects including Qt are using it.  Google is also investigating writing
> browsers using Go instead of C/C++.  Mozilla is looking into moving from
> C/C++ to Rust.  There are large companies or organizations behind popular
> web browser designs.  Unfortunately, it's getting to be too complex for
> someone to attempt to build a browser from scratch and support all the web
> protocols and Web 2.0 features that are expected to make many web sites
> work today.  Most browser projects adopt one of the large browser engines
> and use that.  Even Microsoft went that route with Edge.  If the adopted
> engine doesn't support the platform you're on, it can be very difficult to
> port and maintain.  This could be a serious problem if 32 bit support is
> dropped.
>
> Main issues with porting from 64 bit code to 32 bit are when a program or
> library uses assembly and when the program makes assumptions about the
> size of variables/types.  A program or library designed for speed and
> efficiency might use assembly to improve performance.  As I mentioned, I
> don't usually like to design for efficiency and it's often at odds with
> portability.  I was unable to compile one of the audio libraries I use for
> a 32 bit Android system because the file handling (off_t) was expected to
> support 64 bits.  The library would have to be rewritten to work properly
> on that system.
>
> Sincerely,
> Laura
>
>
Hi,

I did know about whiptail, dialog, yad, zenity, fltk-dialog, Xdialog,
etc.. Puppy uses gtk-dialog which takes a Glade ui file AFAIK, and you
can script it.  If fltk had something like that, it would make lighter
puppies possible.

You are right about the web.  I guess I had overlooked that main point,
since I use firefox, but also use xlinks/links2 regularly.  Web RTC,
etc, have been great technology for web devs, but do put a lot into the
browser.  I wonder if you could separate things into different apps,
with a Web 2.0 hub.  Say video is piped to vlc, and webrtc is piped to
the desktop jitsi client, or whatever.  It would be a multi windowed
browser, but isnt that similar to a chromebook, just kinda reversed?  Do
you think that is possible?

I guess the web is the biggest issue, besides aging architectures.  Low
resource, web 2.0, that is portable and can run on old hardware may be a
pipe dream.  Too bad the major companies aren't thinking about this. 
We'd have less need for data if they did.

-- 
Regards,
 Israel