[webkit-dev] [ANN] Builds of PyWebkitGtk and Webkit-Glib-Gtk (r39359+#16401.master) for Debian i386, Debian AMD64 and Macports MacOSX 10.4

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

webkit-glib-gtk provides gobject bindings to webkit's DOM model.
pywebkitgtk provides python bindings to the gobject bindings of
webkit's DOM model.

files are available for download at:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=236659&package_id=290457&release_id=650548

separate pre-built .debs for AMD64 and i386 Debian are included, for
pywebkitgtk and webkit-gtk with gobject bindings to the DOM model.  if
you have seen OLPC/SUGAR's "hulahop", or if you have used Gecko / XUL
DOM bindings, or KDE's KHTMLPart DOM bindings, you will appreciate the
value of webkit-glib-gtk.  pywebkitgtk with glib/gobject bindings
basically brings pywebkitgtk on a par with hulahop.

if you find the thought of pywebkitgtk with glib bindings, and/or
hulahop to be "all too much", then do consider looking at pyjd (the
other download from the same location, above).  pyjd - aka
pyjamas-desktop - is a level "above" pywebkitgtk-glib, and is on a par
with pykde, pyqt4, pygtk2, python-wxWidgets and other desktop-based
widget sets.  (side-note: the advantage of pyjd is that if you write
an app which conforms to the pyjamas UI widget set API, you can
compile the same python app source code to javascript and run it
directly in all major web browsers: see http://pyjs.org, which is a
python-to-javascript compiler).

code-stability-wise, pywebkitgtk and webkit-glib-gtk should be
considered "experimental" (not least because this is a release from a
svn build!).  that having been said, pyjamas-desktop is declared
"production" because pywebkitgtk with DOM bindings, thanks to
webkit-glib-gtk, provides absolutely everything that pyjamas-desktop
needs (and if webkit-glib-gtk becomes a moving target, the DOM.py
abstraction layer in pyjamas-desktop will take care of it.  if it
becomes a _severe_ moving target, pyjamas-desktop will drop webkit and
provide a python-hulahop / XUL-Geck port instead.  or as well.
whatevrrrr :).

gobject-interface-wise, the webkit gobject DOM bindings that have been
added _can_ be considered to be "stable", as long as the underlying
webkit library IDL files are "stable" (additions to Console.idl were
made in the past couple of months, for example, and HTML5 is making
advances as well).  that having been said, _some_ functionality proved
intransigent during the initial main development phase of the webkit
gobject DOM bindings, such as RGBColour conversion of CSS Style
Properties, and so were *temporarily* left out.  given that
pyjamas-desktop is considered "production", that should give a pretty
clear indication of the importance of those rare bits of DOM model
bindings features that were left out.  SVG Canvas bindings, however,
have NOT been included, as that would have added a further 120
gobjects to the list.


instructions for anyone brave enough to install webkit-glib-gtk from
source, themselves, on macosx:
http://github.com/lkcl/webkit/wikis/installing-webkit-glib-on-macosx
there is an (experimental) Portfile in the macosx 10.4 glib tarball, as well.

please note that the MacOSX build is NOT a "native" webkit build: it
is a GTK / X11 build (known as a "gtk port", in webkit developer
terminology).  the reason for providing the MacOSX webkit-glib-gtk
build, along with a MacOSX port of pywebkitgtk is because the "native"
webkit build - which includes ObjectiveC bindings and thus can
automatically get python bindings - has very subtly different
functionality.  whilst the native ObjectiveC bindings are more fully
compliant with the W3C standards, providing javascript-like
functionality where absolutely necessary, the webkit-glib-gtk build's
gobject bindings are going specifically for direct correspondance with
the functionality provided by the webkit javascript bindings, falling
back to alternatives where it is absolutely not possible to achieve
that goal.

the actual differences, however, are extremely small, percentage-wise.
 out of around 300 objects, providing around 1,500 functions, and tens
of thousands of properties, there are approximately 20 functions that
are different, and only four properties that are different.

examples of the differences in the bindings APIs offered by ObjectiveC
and webkit-glib-gtk Gobject bindings include:

* the provision of the function "toString", which is known as a
javascriptism that is not in the W3C standard.  _not_ providing this
function, which is a de-facto standard, is considered to be
inconvenient, especially as both Gecko's language bindings _and_
PyKDE's PyKHTMLPart bindings provide toString() functions.  The
ObjectiveC bindings, in sticking to the W3C standard, religiously, do
not offer "toString".  the reason for including toString in the
webkit-glib-gtk bindings should be fairly obvious: it is unreasonable
to expect developers who will be used to the de-facto existence of
toString in javascript to find that it's ... disappeared for no good
reason, thus forcing them to make unnecessary coding workarounds,
duplicating the exact same functionality that *already* exists in the
webkit library!

* hspace and vspace of HTMLAppletElement, and width and height of
HTMLEmbedElement, are often (mistakenly) set to "NNNpx", "100%" and
other values, in javascript, contrary to the W3C standards for
HTMLAppletElement and HTMLEmbedElement, respectively.  to make life
easier for webkit applications (such as Safari, the iPhone browser and
other important webkit applications), an exception was made to allow -
and cater for or ignore, as appropriate, values in these non-standard
formats.  Whilst the ObjectiveC bindings stick to the W3C standards,
and only allow hspace, vspace, width and height to be set to integer
values, the webkit-glib-gtk bindings take advantage of the underlying
webkit functions that perform the conversion, and are thus more
tolerant - with the proviso of course that it's perfectly possible for
users to shoot themselves in the foot by trying to set vspace="10em".
such foot-shooting will be silently ignored - just as it is if you
tried to do the same thing with javascript.

* XMLHTTPRequest.send accepts a DOMString on the webkit-glib-gtk
bindings, whereas what should actually be passed in is a Webkit
Document object.  various attempts were made to create appropriate
TextDocument and XMLDocument objects: unfortunately they failed
miserably.  fortunately, earlier versions of Webkit provided a version
of XMLHTTPRequest.send which accepts a DOMString argument, and this
version was reactivated for the webkit-glib-gtk bindings.  the
ObjectiveC and all other bindings successfully pass in a Webkit
Document object.  this issue will at some point need to be addressed,
however it's pretty low priority: using a DOMString works just as
well.

* Document.getSelection is considered to be a javascript-ism, and is
not made available to the ObjectiveC bindings.  the function has been
added to the webkit-glib-gtk bindings just in case anyone feels like
using it.


anyone wishing to use the glib/gobject DOM model directly, in c, is
well advised to look at the example modified
WebKitTools/GtkLauncher/main.c which can be found here:
   http://lkcl.net/pyjamas-desktop/main.c
this modified example is not "gobject-perfect" - there are a couple of
areas where an experienced gobject programmer will spot ref-count
losses that have yet to be addressed, however the code does some
really quite sophisticated messing-about of the DOM model, and
provides genuinely useful code snippets.  developers may be intrigued
to know that some of the code-snippets, such as get_absolute_top(),
are direct ports from pyjamas-desktop of the DOM.py getAbsoluteTop()
function, which was in turn itself a direct port from the javascript
code inside pyjamas DOM.py of the same function name.  the technique,
and the examples, will help other developers wishing to write
applications, by first writing or sourcing an example written in
javascript, and then following the same conversion techniques as can
be seen by comparing DOM.py getAbsoluteTop() with the example main.c
get_absolute_top().

anyone wishing to provide bindings to other languages, such as ruby,
perl or java: the pygtk-codegen-2.0 application pretty much made
mincemeat of webkit.defs (available on request, or look at
code.google.com/p/pywebkitgtk issue #13 - i may update the patch soon
enough) and absolutely _no_ funny business - overrides of _any_ kind -
were required!  the only "funny business" that's in pywebkitgtk
overrides is to do with gtk, not the webkit gobject bindings.  300
objects, 1500 functions and tens of thousands of properties all get
added with a vanilla .defs file.  unbelievable.  so this spells "good
news" for the garbage-collecting languages (e.g. ruby, perl, possibly
java): if your language-of-choice's gobject-auto-generator is as good
as python-gobject's auto-generator, you should be up-and-running
within literally a couple of hours.  oh - but first: i would advise
you to look at pywebkitgtk's "demobrowser.py" for guidance on how to
create a webkit gtk app (using your language of choice) first,
followed by looking at pyjamas-desktop's "pyjd.py" for further hints
on how to bind to the DOM  model functions [pyjd.py is based on
demobrowser.py].

c++ is a different matter.  webkitgtkmm will _not_ be gaining DOM
bindings based on webkit.defs.  after discussions with jonathon
jongsma, we came to the conclusion that it would be far better to
write a _separate_ set of bindings (gobjectmm) actually in webkit, due
to subtle information being available that is lost by the time you get
to webkit-gobject c-bindings.  anyone anticipating to write or have
webkitgtkmm "up-and-running", providing gtk / gobject bindings to
webkit's DOM model, should expect to take between three and four weeks
in writing a CodeGeneratorGobjectMM.pl, using the other WebKit
CodeGenerators as guides.

that's all, for now.  bugs should be reported to the respective
bugtrackers of the appropriate projects -
http://code.google.com/p/pyjamas, http://code.google.com/p/pywebkitgtk
and http://bugs.webkit.org should do the trick.

l.