RISC OS Browser Port: Part II | Drobe.co.uk archives

RISC OS Browser Port: Part II

By Chris Williams. Published: 3rd Sep 2002, 16:44:44 | Permalink | Printable

Riding the X11 waves, chocky.org hints at Konqueror port

drobe.co.uk was today officially brought up to speed by Peter Naulls on his latest porting efforts. We've in the past followed Peter's Unix Porting Project and his recent interest in porting a web browser to RISC OS and so now our intrepid cross compiling developer has taken the next step and clarified his plan to port Konqueror or possibly another open source browser to RISC OS.

Taking Konqueror as example then, for the benefit of those people who don't subject themselves to things like linux, Konqueror is an HTML4.0 compliant web browser that features CSS versions 1 and 2 as well as JavaScript support amongst other things. Peter's website does document other possible browsers too, which may be ported instead of Konqueror. In any case, the browser will be built using the ChoX11 library, which brings the X Windows system to RISC OS, allowing the browser to run natively on our platform. When complete, ChoX11 will enable the huge range of X based software to be ported to RISC OS. At least that's the plan.

What about the money?
As the browser port is under the Unix Porting Project banner, the final binaries will be available for free, just like Peter's other ports. However, you will have to pay for support which Peter's website describes in more detail.

You can read about Peter's activities for yourself from the link below.

Links

The RISC OS Browser Issue aka How Peter Naulls Is Going To Port Us A Browser The Konqueror web browser

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Discussion

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Hmmmm... Looks like the risk os browser world is getting better with NetSurf and then this!

Andrew Duffell on 3/9/02 5:37PM
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You are joking?

Do you seriously believe that Netsurf will become a fully usable browser that supports all of the standards that Konqueror does to the same quality that Konqueror does in the time scale that Peter's talking about, if at all?

Phlip on 3/9/02 5:53PM
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Did I mention any time scales? I just said it is getting better with new browsers nomatter what the time scale is! I expect you don't know much about the status of NetSurf do you???

Andrew Duffell on 3/9/02 6:02PM
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Unforunately not. For an "open source browser", there's no obvious binaries, and no public discussion about development.

Perhaps you'd care to address this, so we can have informed discussion about it like we can with other browsers?

mrchocky on 3/9/02 6:09PM
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[link] - Public Discussion!

Andrew Duffell on 3/9/02 6:20PM
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Just had a look at the NetSurf looks like it's well under way. Good stuff!

-- Steve

knutson on 4/9/02 4:56AM
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The IE emulation problem is the main reason _we_ have a problem. If sites were all constructed to proper HTML standards, even arcweb would still be viable.

How good is konqueror at dealing with all the dodgy javascript out there? -- Jess

jess on 4/9/02 8:40AM
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jess: Well, yes. That's precisely what my document says. There isn't much to gain from you repeating it.

ArcWeb would _not_ be viable. It's a long way from implementing many current standards.

mrchocky on 4/9/02 9:04AM
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Aparently Konqueror uses a rendering engine called khtml. Is this roughly comparable to the Gecko engine that mozilla uses?

Would it be possible to simply port the khtml engine to RISC OS and build a RISC OS style browser around it?

The Doctor on 4/9/02 4:03PM
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khtml appears to be a generic library which is used across the K environment to provide HTML rendering capabilities.

[link]

I can't tell if this can be separated from the rest of the K stuff though. Generally, the work involved in separating such engines and then writing a RO frontend around it is just as daunting as porting the whole lot.

Chris, X-hurts-my-head department, drobe.co.uk

diomus on 4/9/02 8:30PM
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I'm just wondering if Gecko is a better choice for the parser/renderer given that several browsers already use it. For instance, if konqueror stops being developed we will be stuffed. However, if we use a gecko based browser and the same thing happens there would be less effort required to move to an alternative.

Just a thought -- Spriteman.

Spriteman on 5/9/02 10:08AM
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I very much doubt anyone will cease development of either Konqueror, or Mozilla. And besides, they are both opensource so anyone could (and probably would given both browsers following) continue development.

I think Oregano has a much greater chance development ceasing.

-- Ian Hawkins (g0tai)

piemmm on 5/9/02 1:49PM
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I'm sure that both Konqueror and Mozilla aren't going to go anywhere overnight, I was just wondering if the khtml engine was easier to separate from the rest of the code than Gecko is. The reason is that I personally would prefer to end up with a proper RISC OS style browser.

The Doctor on 5/9/02 3:52PM
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(Which doesn't mean I wouldn't support a non RISC OS style one)

The Doctor on 5/9/02 3:54PM
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g0, I was thinking with gecko that we could move to a new browser but with the same gecko engine. But no matter.

I have since been told that khtml/kenqueror is part of the whole KDE suite so it's future looks pretty secure for now. -- Spriteman.

Spriteman on 6/9/02 8:57AM
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"we"? I look forward to your efforts Dave.

mrchocky on 7/9/02 10:48AM
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Apologies for inadvertantly stealing some of your limelight.

It was a community of users 'we'

-- Spriteman.

Spriteman on 7/9/02 11:00PM
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mrchocky: the point I was trying to make is that your (very good) document understates the IE emulation issue. -- Jess

jess on 11/9/02 10:15AM
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