On 7/7/20 9:01 AM, m...@distasis.com wrote: > Some options for quick scripted application development include the usual > dialog/xdialog and bash route. dialog can be built using pdcurses and can > work with any backend pdcurses works with. That means you could > potentially use it with Wayland/SDL. There are several GTK based > dialog-like solutions. The best of those in my opinion is yad ( > https://github.com/v1cont/yad ). Works with GTK 3 and is currently > supported. Also provides the most options for controls. There are dialog > like programs for GUIs like Qt and WxWidgets as well. Some distributions > are using TCL/TK for dialogs and scripts. Others are using lua. Python > has also become popular of late. Another solution some users are > interested in is a hypertext one using HTML/CSS/JavaScript similar to > Microsoft's HTAs (hypertext applications). There are some ways to > accomplish that like Electron.js and NW.js. > > I brought up the web browser because it's probably a good example of a > worst case scenario. There are already some Linux distributions and many > alternative FLOSS distributions that are having trouble finding and > supporting a browser that can handle the majority of the Web 2.0 sites out > there. There are two FLTK/webkit browsers, netrider and fifth. I did > some patching for netrider and did manage to build it from source. It's > not exactly easy to build webkit with all its dependencies from source. > Both browsers are using older versions of webkit. While these browsers > work better than many independently developed FLOSS browsers that are not > Mozilla or webkit based, they have issues with many sites. Also, webkit > source code is not exactly the most portable code. I had issues that > prevented building just when I changed versions of my gnu compiler so > switching from 64 bit to 32 bit if 32 bit is no longer officially > supported may not be easy. The option mentioned most often on the > suckless.org mailing list is surf which is GTK (now 3) and webkit. > > The WhatWG group took over managing the web standards from the W3C. W3C > was an independent organization that was interested in accessiblity. > WhatWG is made up mostly of businesses and organizations that develop > browsers. They tend to push the interests of their particular business or > organization. They've added standards to support semantic web so web > sites will work more effectively on devices/phones with no keyboards. > They've added more multimedia support for formats like those used on > Google's Youtube so that add ons like Flash are no longer needed. That > moves the complexity of video and audio support to the browser. They've > added webGL for 3D/VR/AR support. Another new innovation is webrtc which > can be used for video conferencing. The FLOSS video conferencing project > Jitsi uses webrtc and does not work in browsers unable to support the > protocol. Right now, it's pretty much just Google Chrome and Mozilla > Firefox that offer it. Even Firefox is having some issues with > implementing webrtc although future versions are supposed to support the > protocol better. Webkit was developed by Apple, Google and independent > FLOSS projects. Google's now working on Blink instead of webkit and many > projects including Qt are using it. Google is also investigating writing > browsers using Go instead of C/C++. Mozilla is looking into moving from > C/C++ to Rust. There are large companies or organizations behind popular > web browser designs. Unfortunately, it's getting to be too complex for > someone to attempt to build a browser from scratch and support all the web > protocols and Web 2.0 features that are expected to make many web sites > work today. Most browser projects adopt one of the large browser engines > and use that. Even Microsoft went that route with Edge. If the adopted > engine doesn't support the platform you're on, it can be very difficult to > port and maintain. This could be a serious problem if 32 bit support is > dropped. > > Main issues with porting from 64 bit code to 32 bit are when a program or > library uses assembly and when the program makes assumptions about the > size of variables/types. A program or library designed for speed and > efficiency might use assembly to improve performance. As I mentioned, I > don't usually like to design for efficiency and it's often at odds with > portability. I was unable to compile one of the audio libraries I use for > a 32 bit Android system because the file handling (off_t) was expected to > support 64 bits. The library would have to be rewritten to work properly > on that system. > > Sincerely, > Laura > > Hi,
I did know about whiptail, dialog, yad, zenity, fltk-dialog, Xdialog, etc.. Puppy uses gtk-dialog which takes a Glade ui file AFAIK, and you can script it. If fltk had something like that, it would make lighter puppies possible. You are right about the web. I guess I had overlooked that main point, since I use firefox, but also use xlinks/links2 regularly. Web RTC, etc, have been great technology for web devs, but do put a lot into the browser. I wonder if you could separate things into different apps, with a Web 2.0 hub. Say video is piped to vlc, and webrtc is piped to the desktop jitsi client, or whatever. It would be a multi windowed browser, but isnt that similar to a chromebook, just kinda reversed? Do you think that is possible? I guess the web is the biggest issue, besides aging architectures. Low resource, web 2.0, that is portable and can run on old hardware may be a pipe dream. Too bad the major companies aren't thinking about this. We'd have less need for data if they did. -- Regards, Israel -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~torios Post to : torios@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~torios More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
