Re: Spectrum Internet Suite

["geoff" <geoff@a2central.com.remove-114a-this>]

  To: edepobay
Since I'm the other half who developed SIS, it should be noted that I haven't 
given up on it.  But then I haven't touched the code since the last release 
either.  You will find the requirements that SIS needs far exceeds what is 
available with an 8-bit Contiki.  All of the open source components of SIS 
scripts can be a good start for someone who wants to get an understanding what 
it takes to put a Web Browser together.  To optimize memory, all of the 
comments were pulled some time before 1.0 went into beta.  No effort was made 
to maintain a commented version for primary development (I don't have any 
commented version any more).


Touching on what was brought up:
* SIS was designed from the initial stages to support viewing of graphics,
  but not inline.  There is stub code in the parser that identifies an image
  and provides a message that it isn't supported.  All that is needed is 
  for a picture viewer module to be written and accept the contents and 
  provide a user interface to view/scroll the picture and pass return back to 
  the standard SIS interface when the user is done looking at the picture.

  I don't share the same view as others when it comes to images.  IMO, it
  should be decoded on the local Apple because:
  * Who will maintain a 24/7 proxy server forever?
  * How will security be maintained of content that is being processed through
    a proxy?  

  I believe it was a reported that a highly optimized JPEG decoder took 40
  seconds on an acceleratd IIGS for a 1024x768 24-bit picture when viewed on
  the 24-bit Second Sight display.  More time would be needed to support
  lower color bit-depth and larger picture.  It would be interesting to see
  how well a 30MHz accelerator performs here.

* Ewen never released the HTML parser/renderer code as open source.  Ewen 
  tells me it is almost 64k itself.  If it does go open source, it will be
  challenge to support on an 8-bit Contiki platform.  I recommend looking at
  the parser/renderer of something like elinks since that was designed with a 
  small text screen in mind and provides better table/frame support than SIS.
  Of course there is the simpler portable libwww.  Of course, the elinks and
  libwww options would need something like a IIGS.

* Porting javascript (SpiderMonkey) should be trivial to do on the GS.  One of 
  the things it wants to do is to be able modify "any element" on the page.
  SIS doesn't treat the page this way so much work would have to be done to 
  strip the reliance on TextEdit and have an actual native HTML renderer
  control.  I'm not sure how useful an implementation of Javascript would be
  if it doesn't have the ability to write to any random area of the page.  
  This doesn't even touch on what extra work has to be done by SIS' XWindow 
  module to handle Events for Javascript.

 > On May 14, 4:08=A0am, spectrumda...@nospam.com (Ewen) wrote:
 > > Anthony,
 > >
 > > > A tall order indeed...any takers?
 > > > At least I know there is no problem with my system. It may be that 
 > > > things have just moved on so much since the last release of SIS and it 
 > > > doesn't know what to do.
 > >
 > > You have hit the nail on the head. Back in the late nineties, when SIS 
 > > was being developed, web sites were not as complicated as they are now. 
 > > The limited memory of the IIgs seemed ample then to display even the 
 > > biggest site. Unfortunately events have overtaken it...
 > >
 > > One approach for anyone wishing to tackle the project, would be to use 
 > > the SIS HTML engine to build a web browser, driven by a custom 
 > > application instead of a Spectrum script. That would use less memory, and 
 > > would allow the browser to work faster.
 > >
 > > Anybody out there willing to try?
 > >
 > > Ewen
 > 
 > Hi!

 > I'm willing to.
 > I'm sure I'll need some help, but I could start and then post my
 > doubts.
 > Or maybe, after doing some research I could post a couple ideas and
 > then continue working after some feedback and so on.
 > What I was thinking about is just to process html, javascript,
 > vbscript, ...
 > Things like flash, silverlight and so are out of question, for now.
 > The other problem I was thinking how to solve is related to images... 
 > that's really something, mostly because I would like the browser to be 
 > available for older models (not only the IIgs).
 > However, I didn't even try it. So, I think I'll start right now and
 > let you know how it goes in a short time...

 > Daniel