Re: Musings...

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <6ac01l$eor@login.freenet.columbus.oh.us>,
Dave Althoff <dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us> wrote:
>I just heard on the radio today that Netscape is not only going to give
>away their browser, they are also releasing the source code.

   Netscrape 4.03/Linux binary on disk:
{nathan@ikkoku/1 ~} lsl /usr/local/bin/netscape
-r-xr-xr-x   1 root     wheel     8363536 Sep  4 06:28 /usr/local/bin/netscape*

   And said version looking at www.cnn.com:

{nathan@ikkoku/5 ~} ps -aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM  SIZE   RSS TTY STAT START   TIME COMMAND
nathan     670  3.2 15.2 15240  9688  p4 S    22:01   0:11 netscape http://www.cnn.com

   Translation: 15MB of RAM. I'm sorry, I just don't think my GS is up
to that. Also, source code would be for the first version 5 beta,
which is many months off.

   Mosaic, the original graphical web browser that Marc Andreeson did
before he left to form Netscrape, has *always* been available in
source code form. [Heck, lynx is simpler and has been
source-available] If anyone wanted to port something, it's be better
to try moving something that had MUCH less bloat.

   Both Mosaic and Netscrape are full of calls to Motif, a sorta
system-abstracted GUI layer.  As with most code, I'd expect those
calls to be spread throughout the source, requiring lots of changes.
Also, Mosaic/etc were originally for unix, so you can bet that 32-bit
code is assumed at all points, requiring lots of massaging to get thru
a compiler.

   Anyone wanting to do such a project might want to take a look at
http://www.visi.com/~nathan/a2/faq/gnoporting.html -- all sorts of
tips in porting unix programs to the GS. There's plenty of folks
who've done unix ports before, so you could always ask (though get a
book[shelf] on Motif) on either the a2 programming newsgroups. [I've
got more than enough work on my plate to consider doing any such thing
for now.]

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? -R.A. Heinlein