[Xorg] Server side widgets

[Roland Mainz]

Ely Levy wrote:
[snip]
> > Using XUL is a BAD idea. We would have to import half of Mozilla's
> > codebase into the X.org tree just to get that working. Hint: The Mozilla
> > code base is AFAIK larger than the whole X.org tree. It sounds like
> > hunting chicken with a Leopard-II tank...
> >
> I'm not sure about that,
> There might be a way to do it without using too much of mozilla code.
> or even doing our own renderer.
> I heard about a mozilla project which suppose to be a XUL based
> replacement to XAML, which might be intresting for this discussion.
> but again I was just brining up ideas, if someone knows a better langauge
> I'll be happy to hear:)

It's not "just the language". Using XUL will end-up in a pain:
You need code to render XUL, which requires a very complex layout
engine. Then you need CSS for some stuff, making layout even more
complex (just think about tables). Then you need to render _text_...
which itself results in the requirent for scalers, shapers etc (sure,
you can plug-in ICU here :)
Finally you get a monster which depends on glib, Pango, ICU and most of
the other Gnome libraries. I am not sure whether all this stuff belongs
into the Xserver, especially into a Xserver which permanently runs as
user "root".

And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Above describes the problems with layout, rendering and some of the
dependicies. How do you connect the widgets to each other within the
server side ? Well... XUL mainly uses JavaScript for that... which means
we would need a javascript engine, preferably a preemptive one... and I
am not sure whether everyone here wants JS as primary server-side widget
language.

----

Bye,
Roland

-- 
  __ .  . __
 (o.\ \/ /.o) roland.mainz at nrubsig.org
  \__\/\/__/  MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer
  /O /==\ O\  TEL +49 641 7950090
 (;O/ \/ \O;)