Re: WebKitGTK+ as an external dependency

[Patryk Zawadzki <patrys pld-linux org>]

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Luca Ferretti <elle uca libero it> wrote:
> 2009/5/4 Xan Lopez <xan gnome org>:
>
> <snip>
>> I'd like to end the email by requesting feedback from all the module
>> maintainers that are considering a switch to WebKitGTK+
> Could be also good have a minimal feedback from distro packagers. I
> suppose that even though all relevant GNOME Desktop modules will be
> switched to WebKitGtk, distros will continue to provide Firefox as
> standard browser. So Fedora or Ubuntu, for example, will have to put
> both Firefox (default browser) and WebKitGtk (as HTML rendering
> library for Yelp Help Browser) in their install CD.
>
> But they have a constraint on size, 700MB. Due to this, Ubuntu don't
> provide the GIMP own help browser.

That's so wrong it hurts. We should use technical measures to decide
which deps go in. WebKitGtk is not a Firefox alternative. Firefox is a
web browser that happens to include Gecko.

Gecko (xulrunner) is a web kitchen sink - a set of parsers, a
rendering engine, a JS engine and a completely new graphical toolkit -
all designed with building web browsers in mind. WebKitGtk is a set of
embeddable GTK+ widgets based on WebKit - designed with embedding in
mind. It's actually easier to build a web browser with WebKitGtk than
to embed Gecko in an application such as a web browser or an instant
messaging apps.

Of course it's my opinion and you are free to disagree with the above
or you can raise valid concerns like a11y not being fully functional
in WebKitGtk but please not judge software by their size (especially
if Gecko is actually bigger than WebKitGtk even including the
webinspector module).

PS: 700 MB limit in 2009 is as good as a floppy :)

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki