[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 16030] Add support for OpenSearch to WebCore with an API usable by various ports

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16030





------- Comment #3 from mrowe at apple.com  2007-11-17 15:39 PDT -------
(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > This may be something that a web browser would like to support, but I don't
> > think it makes sense for WebKit to provide it.
> 
> Yeah that was kind of my first thought too. But I figured if someone (like
> myself) did the work, adding it to WebKit would make it easier for other ports
> to use it. With Firefox and even IE7 supporting it, I think it is becoming a de
> facto standard for specifying how to search with a given service.

That's fine, but Firefox and IE are both browsers.  Adding support to
WebKit-using browsers such as Safari, OmniWeb or Epiphany does not require
adding support to WebKit.

> > There is nothing about the
> > specification that requires WebCore-level integration, 
> 
> Will the HTML parser show <link rel="search" /> tags in the DOM? In other words
> if the engine doesn't directly support a "callback" when it finds those tags,
> will the browser be able to look over the DOM and find them? I am not yet
> familiar with that part of the WebKit code and don't know if "unknown tags" are
> not put in the DOM.

Unknown tags remain in the DOM, yes.  In this case however, "link" is a
standard element specified in HTML 4:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.3.

> > so in this instance I
> > think it would make sense to be implemented as a separate WebKit-using library
> > rather than as part of WebKit itself.
> 
> Is there any precedent for libraries that build on top of WebKit like this? How
> would other WebKit developers find such libraries? Is there a place to register
> them so others can find them?
> 
> Because I think this idea is fine, but it would be nice if there was an
> infrastructure for it.

I don't think such a library would be particularly WebKit-specific.  Extracting
the relevant "link" elements from the DOM is clearly WebKit specific but would
be a relatively small amount of code (maybe 100 lines, if that).  The real work
would be in the parsing of the OpenSearch description document, the URL
templates, and response formats.  None of this needs to be WebKit-specific.  In
my opinion it would benefit a wider audience if this code was *not*
WebKit-specific.


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