Netsurf 68k

[chris]

But apps like netsurf would benefit classic amiga community for long time, if somebody could pay some attention to make optimized port with proper gui.

Yes, there's no reason why it shouldn't work on lower memory, slower 68k systems.

The OS4 GUI shouldn't be too difficult to backport (to OS3.9BB2 as it is Reaction based).  Some work would need to be done to get the pages displaying properly on 8-bit displays (currently, even on OS4, NetSurf needs a 16-bit or higher screenmode), and the font code is a bit special but I have a ttfengine version floating around somewhere which might be a good starting point although will need to be fixed up.

If somebody #ifdef'd the OS4 frontend with OS3 changes and helped add features (such as 8-bit display support) and fix bugs I would be well happy!

Sadly Bernd and Artur only seem to be interested in hacking the SDL frontend, which wasn't really designed as a full desktop browser.

[chris]

The question is, would it be easier / faster to port Netsurf so that it doesn't use SDL, uses MUI and works fast.  Or would it be easier / faster to update AWeb (which is open source, I believe...)

The former.

Is netsurf for OS4 SDL based, or is it reaction/mui?

OS4 NetSurf is Reaction-based.  There shouldn't be anything there which wouldn't work on OS3.9u2, the actual GUI stuff is pretty simple windows/buttons/empty space/tabs with some dynamic adding/removing (which can always be stuck in "always there" mode if necessary).  It may need some slight reworking to replace new OS4 functions with older ones.

The hardest part will be modifying the plotters to use an 8-bit palette, and the UTF-8 text display will need replacing (I have some old code using ttfengine which should work as a replacement with some updating).

It'll take somebody a few weeks to "back-port" it.

If anybody does this and bases it on the OS4 code, please just #ifdef so improvements benefit both versions.

Oh, and join the netsurf-dev mailing list!

Chris

[chris]

@wawrzon

Good luck!

@Crumb

And unfortunately they use ixemul instead of libnix, making the final product not as nice as it could be. Do you know if OS4 netsurf could be recompiled with clib2 instead of newlib? Since there's a clib2 version for m68k perhaps it makes the job easier.

IIRC I never got it to build with clib2, but I was very close and was having less problems than with newlib.  I switched because newlib is recommended and a library I needed I only had a newlib version of, after that I didn't try clib2 again.

I don't expect any particular problems with clib2, and no *ix libraries should be needed with a native interface.  I don't know which functions are requiring the use of ixemul, NS doesn't use any functions that aren't in standard clib2 AFAIK.

[chris]

Any news about this?

Some unconnected movement:
http://vlists.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev-netsurf-browser.org/2011-January/002297.html

What needs to be done:
http://vlists.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev-netsurf-browser.org/2011-January/002304.html

Any takers?