Re: [MLUG] Coding a Web Browser

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Remember that webserver written in Postscript? Now that was an insane
hack. Why not write the browser all in Postscript too. :)

*^*^*^*
Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape
you. -- Albert Einstein

On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Jonathan King wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Neil Bradshaw wrote:
> 
> > How hard would it be to code a completely w3-compliant web browser? 
> 
> I think the harder part would be getting through the 12-step program
> afterwards. :-)
> 
> > No proprietary specs, just w3 recommendations and specifications. 
> 
> Well, which specs?  Some are *much* harder than others.  As soon as you do
> any graphical rendering above the level of Lynx, the level of complexity
> goes way up. And then there is the question of style sheets; CSS1 (much
> less CSS2) is a very formidable undertaking indeed, if you had to code it
> by hand.  Similarly, any attempt to deal with javascript forces you to
> deal with the DOM specs.  And then there's the problem of what you want
> your compliant browser to do with non-compliant (or even non-parsable)
> HTML.  To put it another way, lots of people start doing things like this,
> but only about five or six groups in the world have ever finished since
> W3C recommendations held any sway.
> 
> > I'm guessing C is the way to go for such a monsterous undertaking.
> 
> If I really had to write a web browser, I pretty much know that I would
> have to make extreme use of libraries written by others. It's the same
> argument as with writing many mathematical applications: anybody who codes
> up low-level linear algebra routines from scratch these days is either
> doing research in that exact field, or is a completely hopeless case.  
> But even if you're using Gecko to render and something else to handle
> network protocols, an off-the-shelf HTML parser, you're still in for a
> huge amount of coding.
> 
> As for using C, I'm pretty sure you'd have to be able to call C libraries,
> but very dubious about writing the whole thing in C.  I think the last
> remotely compliant browser written by a very small team or a single person
> is William Perry's Emacs/w3 (see
> http://www.cs.indiana.edu/elisp/w3/docs.html ), which was written in Emacs
> lisp and re-used tons of code from elsewhere.  But that was 1999, and it's
> missing a lot these days.  Grail was a browser written in Python, and I
> think somebody did one in O'CAML (an object-oriented ML derivative).
> These days, it seems like the "macho" programming task in a language is to
> write a compliant server.
> 
> But, hey, if you're still young, who is to say?  Back when I was foolish,
> I rewrote an embarassingly large subset of emacs-editing functionality
> in...Hypertalk.  Don't ask me why.  But it was kinda like writing a web
> server in Cobol; sure, you can do it, but, oh! the humanity!
> 
> jking
> 
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