Re: Musings...

[wsmith@NOSPAM.ctron.com (Will Smith)]

On 25 Jan 1998 06:52:53 GMT, smentzer@ecom.net (Steven W. Mentzer)
wrote:

|>>Well, a port is probably out of the question simply because of hardware
|>>limitations.  But it seems to me that the combination of released source
|>>code for a graphic browser and the availability of network connections for
|>>the IIgs would make the development of a graphic browser (probably without
|>>the automatic JPG/GIF decoding) just an itty bitty bit simpler, would it not?

he said it himself: the GIF/JPEG issue is one of the first problems to
come to mind.  Nathan and you point out the memory allocation issue...

|>When you really think about it, a web browser is actually fairly easy to 
|>write. The logic to handle the various HTML2 tags is fairly simple. It is the 
|>newer "enhanced" HTML (if you can even call it that these days) tags are a 
|>little more complicated.

complicated, but not impossible.  treat the incoming page as a stream
of data, watch for the "<" and react accordingly...  effectively, it's
a filter...

|>The upshot of this is that the hard part about writing a web browser is 
|>interaction with the underlying GUI. The IP connectivity and HTML 
|>interpretation is easy. GUI is a pain in the ass. Remember that HTML was 
|>designed to be platform independant. 

<sarcasm>you mean that EVERYONE doesn't have time to sit and translate
Motif calls to GS/OS calls?  </sarcasm>

|>(FWIW - I happen to know a little about web browsers, as I was involved with 
|>the development of one of the 1st web browsers for OS/2 3.0 several years 
|>ago... although the project got lost/canned due to a lack of development 
|>effort)

careful...  you might get drafted...  <evil grin>

---
William Smith
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