Re: Attempting to Create Obj-C Gecko Framework

[Brian Powell]

On Monday, April 9, 2001, at 10:23 PM, Pedro Ivo Andrade Tavares wrote:

> Indeed it would be; good luck to you and your team in this effort! Take 
> heart, for it will not be easy.
>
> May I suggest a different path for your effort: study XPCOM (Cross 
> Platform Component Object Model). All Gecko objects are defined in an 
> Interface Definition Language, which is compiled with a tool called 
> xpidl into source C++ files. XPCOM is supposed to be able to be used 
> across several languages, altough there is only support for C++ and 
> JavaScript today.
>
> This framework could implement XPCOM in terms of ObjC objects; if 
> everything goes alright, Gecko C++ objects (such as nsiWebBrowser and 
> such) could be seen as ObjC objects, by running the *.idl files through 
> a xpidl-to-objc tool. That would make the job a lot easier.

Hmmm, interesting; however, I'm not sure that gecko uses XPCOM for 
creation of the UI (which is the problem I am looking at right now).  I 
may be wrong, please correct me if so.

> Also, I suggest you do not try to go overboard in providing gnustep-gui 
> buttons, and such, to Gecko. First focus on embedding Gecko as it is 
> today into a NSView. Then, if XPCOM has been correctly implemented by 
> the Mozilla team, you will be able to write XPCOM ObjC objects to 
> provide a wrapper over the gnustep-gui objects.

Well, see the problem with Gecko is that it must render graphical 
objects.

Quoted From <http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/ngport.html>:

> There are three parts of the new layout engine that are not cross 
> platform and therefore need to be implemented for each environment to 
> which it is ported. These are parts of mozilla/base, parts of 
> mozilla/gfx and mozilla/widget:
>
> mozilla/base contains a public interface called nsITimer that is used 
> for triggering timeouts. There is also a test directory in base 
> containing a test app to exercise the timer.
>
> mozilla/gfx contains a set of interfaces to enable cross platform 
> rendering of lines, rects, text, images, etc. All of the graphics 
> interfaces are spec'ed in mozilla/gfx/src. The set of interfaces that 
> have XP implementations have corresponding .cpp files in gfx/src. The 
> remaining interfaces are implemented per-platform in subdirectories of 
> gfx/src. For a list of exactly which interfaces need to be implemented, 
> use gfx/src/windows as a guide.
>
> mozilla/widget contains a set of interfaces for cross platform support 
> of user interface widgets (i.e. button, scrollbar, editfield, etc). To 
> date, the implementation of the widgets is completely platform 
> dependent so there is no code shared among the various implementations. 
> The scope of widgets and there functionality is essentially that 
> required to support HTML form elements. The interfaces are defined in 
> widget/public and there are per-platform subdirectories in widget/src.

So, from reading this and a brief glance through the code, there are 
native UI instantiations for each port.  This is what I was referring to 
in that I needed to create an NSButton from a C++ object.  My thoughts 
were that the application would create an NSCell (or NSView) and embed 
gecko within it.  gecko would then create the controls it needed (as 
directed by the HTML page, for instance, a text field) via the gecko 
controller (NGLController as I am naming things) would handle the 
creation, communications, etc.  So, the model is gecko, the controller 
is NGLController, and the view is created by the application.

I am simply in the investigation, study, and recruitment phase right 
now, so, everyone who has written, your input has been very valuable.  
Thank you!

--Brian