Re: [Geary] port to WebKit 2?

[Michael Gratton <mike vee net>]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 7:20 AM, Adam Dingle <adam medovina org> wrote:
> > > Hopefully we can find another workaround.  The best fix, however, 
> > > will probably be to port to WebKit 2, i.e. WebKit 2.10 or 2.12:
> > >
> > > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728002
> > >
> > > Do you think you'll have time to take this on?  It might be a nice 
> > > little starter project to help you get up to speed on the codebase. 
> > >  :)
> >
> > Yeah, I've been thinking about the need to port to WebKit2 for a 
> > while. As everyone keeps on pointing out though, it's a big task 
> > (shared lib with DBus API) and seems to have some limitations (not 
> > being able to reasonably embed GTK+ widgets any more[0]), so I'm 
> > wondering if the current approach is still the best way to do it any 
> > longer.
> >
> > If GSK were ready to go, I would suggest that might make for a more 
> > appropriate way to build the conversation UI. With a reasonably 
> > low-tech use of WebKit2, perhaps with an individual WebKitWebView 
> > per message, then we may not need much or any IPC between the WebKit 
> > process and the main Geary process. We would also be able to embed 
> > GTK widgets in the convo view, and further it would fix some weird 
> > interactions with the current view, like Select All also including 
> > the header chrome and contact avatar.
> >
> > However GSK didn't make 3.20 as ebassi was originally planning, and 
> > I don't know what its current status is, so maybe that means looking 
> > into using Clutter instead?
> >
> > What do you (and everyone else) think?
>
> Mike, unfortunately I haven't looked into this enough to have an 
> informed opinion.  I don't actually understand why we'd need to use 
> either GSK or Clutter - a scrolling GTK view with one embedded 
> WebKitWebView for each message would seem like the simplest path, 
> though apparently that's not (easily) possible.
>
> In any case, if Pantheon Mail has ported to WebKit2 then I think we 
> should certainly look at that.`

I was thinking GSK/Clutter to be able retain something closer to the 
existing look of the conversation view, but I guess that style should 
be able to be retained using standard widgets without too many 
problems? That certainly seems to be the approach taken by Pantheon 
Mail, at least.

Will start looking into it.

//Mike

--
⊨ Michael Gratton, Percept Wrangler.
⚙ <http://mjog.vee.net/>