[webkit-dev] Re: Ports and Forks

[Rob Burns]

On Feb 16, 2007, at 3:44 AM, René v Amerongen wrote:
> I second that for 100%. The overall quality will be better.  
> Besides, the one mans implemented idea is the other mans solution.
>
> However I also will ask right here, the question to make more  
> documentation about the webkit parts and targets, so that new  
> people around here can jump in more quickly instead of searching  
> and finally start there own fragment with there own documentation.
>
> RvA

One thing that would help would be to open up the wiki fostering more  
and better documentation. Perhaps it’s just me, but I'm not able to  
edit the wiki. There could be pages for general porting and a page  
for each port. Also it would be a good place to document WebKit’s  
specific DOM and CSS idiosyncrasies. It could also be place to  
develop and convey some consensus over decisions on what non-standard  
DOM/APIs WebKit will or should support. Mozilla has an excellent Wiki  
documentation website, but of course it applies to Mozilla and  
doesn't cover WebKit'’s peculiarities.

Some topics that I think the Wiki could use:

- Porting WebKit
	•  Windows Port]
	•  LInux Port
	•  BSD Port
	•  etc.
WebKit and DOM (discuss philosophy of supporting W3C DOM standards  
but also support for non-standard IE and Mozilla APIs)
	•  DOM 1 support and missing support
	•  DOM 2 support and missing support
	•  DOM 3 support and missing support
	•  DOM 0 / non-W3C APIs and missing support and the reasons it’s  
missing (if any)
WebKit and CSS
	*  CSS1
	*  CSS2, CSS2.1 (working draft) and how WebKit will deal with the  
discrepancies)
	•  CSS 3 modules (working drafts; perhaps a separate page for each  
module)
Compound Documents and various XML namespaces
	•  XHTML 1, XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.1 modularization
	•  Ruby
	•  SVG
	•  MathML
	•  xml:base
	•  RDF
	•  XEvents
	•  XForms
	•  XInclude
Other W3C Recommendation Support
	•  XLink, XPointers, XPath, XQuery
WhatWG specifications (these may be more problematic because WhatWG  
changes the semantics of elements without introducing a new namespace  
URI. However, the semantic changes are minor)

I think providing some of these pages and allowing developers to  
contribute to them would help inform other developers what their  
colleagues are working on. Also it will help prevent developers from  
needing to reinvent the wheel. Finally, it would help provide an  
evolving roadmap for the whole project.

Best wishes,
Rob