Re: Shapes layout proposal

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Lennon Day-Reynolds wrote:

> Okay, I just have to weigh in here...this looks like too much fun.
>
> Cyrille Chepelov wrote
>
>  > Anyway, if you prove me wrong with working code (I've got a P133 to
>  > check the speed side...), then alright, I would have been wrong  [:-)]
>
> It should be at least two to three times faster than Netscape 4.X
> (simpler DOM, no JavaScript, faster parsers, etc.), so if that P133
> can do any web browsing, I think we're okay. No, it's not going to
> compete with well-tuned single-purpose C code, but you should be able
> to maintain and extend the app in a fraction of the time it takes
> currently, as well as share more code and resources with other
> applications, since the design will be more familiar to new developers.

Let me join into the fray:)

Netscape 4.X does not use JavaScript to render (except pages that use
JavaScript, but I tend to avoid them and run with JavaScript turned off).
Mozilla, however, uses XML internally to define everything, including
menus, dialogs and rendering, and it's annoyingly much slower than
Netscape.  More flexible, yes, but it should take almost a second to render
an ASCII page from memory cache.  If Netscape 4.X vs. Mozilla is any
comparision, then I shall veto this proposal (under the powers vested to me
by Eris:).

In any case, this is such a major restructuring that we have better things
to do first.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause) | Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I    | Retainer of Sir Kegg
will defend to the death your right to say it."    |   of Westfield
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire   | Chaos Berserker of Khorne