Re: Dontation -- html renderer for Swing.

[Thomas Zander]

Hi Mark,

On Saturday 11 December 2004 18:04, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-12-11 at 12:57, Thomas Zander wrote:
> > I'd like to donate the sources of the project, including my work done
> > since the fork, to classpath since I don't have the time to finish
> > upgrading the sources (it still implements array-copies and stuff
> > instead of using ArrayList)
>
> Thanks. We need to find someone to maintain it though if you cannot help
> with integration and updating the sources so they fit into GNU
> Classpath. Could you outline how you think it could be best integrated
> and what tasks remain to be done?

As a standalong html widget, it works without problems, and is complete.  
For it to work with Swing (which means, in a JLabel and/or textComponent) 
there may be some refactoring that needs to be done,  but I doubt it will 
be much.
The getPreferredSize() methods and friends need to be looked at carefully 
since they don't return a valid value during parsing;  and since parsing is 
standard done in a separate thread, this may cause problems with Swings 
single-thread logic.
Note that this is not a problem for normal html usage; but if you plan to 
scale it down to the size where it fits on a JButton or JLabel, you 
probably need to provide a single-threading setting of sorts.

> > License history:
> > 
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/uic/uicompiler/optional/uic/widgets/html/LICENCE?rev=HEAD
> >
> > As you can see in the above link, the original license is basically a
> > freeware, please share, no strings attached license. Almost like public
> > domain.
> > I am the sole copyright holder of the changes since the import so any
> > relicensing of those changes is possible, although I believe forking an
> > Apache project and relicensing in the process is possible.
>
> Normally we want to have a complete paper trail of the sources we
> distribute as part of GNU Classpath. This is normally a simple process
> of sending a statement to the FSF that you have the right to contribute
> the sources to the project and that the FSF is free to distribute them
> as part of the GNU project. That way we (and all users) can be sure that
> GNU Classpath is now and will always be free software. We don't want
> surprizes somewhere in the future when someone claims to have rights on
> a work that we didn't know about when we added the sources. And we want
> to be sure for example that the people who worked on GNU Classpath code
> didn't study and/or copy some proprietary implementation while working
> on code intended to be contributed to the project.
>
> See also:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/docs/hacking.html#SEC2
> http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/faq/faq.html#faq3_1
>
> So we would like to contact the original author. Could you try to
> contact him and ask him to email me about donating the code to the GNU
> Classpath project?

As I said before; the original author went missing. Reading various forums 
many many people have tried to contact him, and I find myself lucky that I 
found the sourceforge project where he put his sources.
http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~offshore/index.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/htmlbrowser/

This is a component that has nothing to do with the Swing API and therefor I 
make this offer with a clear conscience.  If you ask me if I have seen Suns 
sources for the j2se, yes I have.
But, like I would never ask if Linus ever seen Windows sources, I'm curous 
why you ask since the relevance is non existant; the implementation is 
nothing like, not based on and much, much more mature then any html 
rendering in the Sun sourcetree.  As someone who has seen both 
implementations; they are nothing alike in design.

Note that I did not, and can not, offer to help patching the html widget 
into Swing. Your requirements don't allow this. I know.
What I am offering is a stand alone library that has no attachments, can't 
even be based on, and basically is free from being called 'tainted'.

I hope you will investigate further and accept this donation.

Have a great weekend!
-- 
Thomas Zander

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