Re: gtkhtml

[Steven Kordik <stevek voila net>]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:47:35 +0300, Ali Abdin said:

>  Prolly because gtkhtml is still in a heavy developmental stage.

And has been for nearly a year now.  I got tired of waiting.  Especially
since the "heavy development" that is currently going on has nothing to
do with rendering HTML.  In fact, the HTML rendering code has changed
little since 0.2... All of the current development is bonobo/gconf
related.  Now tell me, (at the risk of starting a flame war) why should a
widget ... A WIDGET... require gconf?  GConf is a cool idea.. I even
looked at it for CSCMail. It is a nice configuration mechanism.  Widgets
don't have config files.  They get supplied their configuration by the
application that uses the widget... Anyway, although it may not win me
any friends (and certainly didn't in #gnome) I have often raised these
kinds of questions to the Helix folks, and have been told pretty much
point-blank that GtkHTML is going to be GNOME through and through,
because they are only devloping it for its use in Evolution.  I mentioned
rendering issues, and was told that it was "good enough" to be used to
render e-mail for evolution, so they where not concerned about changing
any thing.  This proved to me that the current developers of GtkHTML
where no longer interested in creating a "lightweight HTML rendering
widget" but where instead just creating the HTML-mail viewer for
Evolution.  Fine.. that is their choice.  I happen to be in need of a
good lightweight HTML renderer for my project.
So I took the good parts of GtkHTML and dropped the bad...  Turns out
CscHTML is faster, and I am already adding rendering features (support
for the <font face=> tag went in this weekend) and have plans to expand
it even further.

>  Anyway regardless - If I was in that position, I would have created a 
>  patch anyway and distribute instead of forking the whole thing.

So now you get to maintain your patch.	You get to download GtkHTML and
keep up with all the changes that they make to make sure that your patch
keeps pace with them.  But you don't get to say anything about their
development, so you are always playing catch up.  Sounds like a full time
job to me.  Might as well just fork the whole thing.. At least this way
you get to work at your own pace, and don't have to worry about their
latest version breaking your patch.

> that way you get the fixes/updates from 
>  gtkhtml, and you get the application to do what you want.

Fact is, I don't WANT the fixes/updates that have been coming into
GtkHTML recently.  It's all GNOME/Evolution centric.  None of the last 6
months worth of code has anything to do with an HTML widget.  (I compared
0.2 to 0.4 when I started my fork.  I nearly forked 0.2 just because it
was functionaly the same widget... HTML rendering wise.)


Anyway, I am probably coming off like an angry child, and not winning any
friends.  I hope thats not the case.  I believe that CSCMail is the only
stable, full featured application that USES GtkHTML.  (Evolution doesn't
count since it doesn't work yet)  People browse the web with CSCBrowser
(masochists... I don't understand it either) and people read their mail
with CSCMail (using GtkHTML to render it)  So, maybe I tend to take it a
lil personal when my questions and suggestions get ignored for months on
end.  I try really hard not to.  But after my chat with Miguel in #gnome
a few weeks ago, it was quite clear to me that GtkHTML was no longer
being developed as a generic HTML widget, but was instead wholey
Evolution centric. No surprise there really... The coders for GtkHTML all
work for Helix, and Evolution is Helix's #1 project right now.	I wish
them the best.. CscHTML is being developed for use in ANY gtk application
that wants it, not just to link with MY program.

My ultimate dream?  Maybe someday CscHTML will get rolled into Gtk
proper... Wow.. wouldn't that be cool?

-Count Zero