Re: [Evolution-hackers] PATCH: gtkhtml-search.c fixes segfault in gtk_html_isearch

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 15:22 +0100, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
> From looking at the examples, am I right in thinking that
> gtkhtml/components/editor is essentially a "plain", embeddable GTK+
> widget, and the html-editor is a bonobo component, requiring all the
> CORBA plumbing?  If so, I think I'll lean toward the former rather than
> the latter for what I'm doing if I use it for editing support.

Yes, that's correct.  I wrote the "editor" component recently to replace
"html-editor", which is now deprecated.  They both do the same thing.


> I haven't looked through evolution's source in great detail, but I've
> seen enough that you're using "magic" URIs to trigger
> application-specific behavior as well.  Maybe this is just on the
> viewing side instead of the editing side, but I don't see you'll be able
> to get rid of GtkHTML until the link intercept support is part of the
> GTK+ interface.

Probably true, and thanks for bringing that issue to my attention.


> I'm not considering starting it today, but I was just trying to get a
> feel for if it was a 3 week, 3 month or 3 year type of effort.  Part of
> my issue is that I'm on a pretty tight deadline to deliver the core
> functionality in weeks rather than months, but I've been hitting walls
> until I bit the bullet and went down the GtkHTML path (including
> throwing together a very minimal ruby binding this morning which is how
> I found the bug).  Unfortunately, it was either that or fix GtkHTML2's
> busted selection model, implement text search, etc., etc.

CSS is a complex beast, and I know WebKit has put a great deal of effort
into making its CSS support fully standards-compliant.  I really have no
idea how much the effort it would take to get basic CSS support working
in GtkHTML, but if you're serious about pursuing it I'd suggest forking
the code and trying to get something working well enough to meet your
own needs, which I assume is significantly less than full standards
compliance.

I don't know if your design is modular enough for this to be feasible,
but you might also consider starting a parallel implementation using
WebKit and get as far with it as you can, with the intent of switching
away from GtkHTML once the issues that are blocking you get fixed.  That
way you don't wind up "stuck" with GtkHTML for the long term, especially
after _we_ abandon it.

Matthew Barnes