NPAPI-based features in LO

[Stephan Bergmann]

LO has two features that make use of NPAPI 
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI>):

(1)  LO as a browser plugin, displaying LO documents directly in a 
browser window (enabled via LO's "Tools - Options... - Internet - 
Browser Plug-in").  (configure.ac uses the term 
ENABLE_NPAPI_INTO_BROWSER for this.)

(2)  Plugging browser plugins into LO.  One known use-case was (is?) to 
display .swf content via the Adobe flash player plugin, at least on Mac 
OS X and Windows.  This feature was previously discussed in the mail 
thread starting at 
<http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2012-November/041259.html> 
"LO as an NPAPI browser plugin host?," and retained in particular for 
<http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2012-November/041439.html>. 
  (configure.ac uses the term ENABLE_NPAPI_FROM_BROWSER for this.)

There is long-standing issue 
<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45071> "Browser plugin 
option not working" that claims that feature (1) is not working in 
certain (Windows) scenarios (while it is known to work in certain Linux 
scenarios at least).

Some comments in that issue suggest to remove feature (1), and there is 
now patch <https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/9644/> "Partial fix for 
bug 45071 - Remove NPAPI support" attempting to remove both features (1) 
and (2).

What is our rough consensus on these features?

For (1), is it a feature worthy enough to keep---at least in the 
known-good scenarios, potentially removing it from the known-bad ones or 
even investing into fixing it there?

For (2), is the evaluation from late 2012 still relevant?  I at least 
see no pressing need to tie the fate of feature (2) to that of feature 
(1), but overall code reduction of course isn't bad, either.

Stephan