RE: [express-devel] [uh1763@bingo-ev.de: Re: more fixes]

[Brian St.P. <bst...@me...>]

bounced??? hmmm....

> > I had some time tonight, so I've put some more fixes together.
> Is anyone attached to the FORK_DOWNLOAD code in open_url.c?
>
> Nope.

It's as good as gone, then.

> IMHO, we should try to fix the most annoying stuff, so we can make a
> first release (announce on freshmeat etc.). Maybe then more developers
> get interested, and help developing Express.
>
> Stuff that, IMHO, needs to be fixed before a release:
>   * HTTP 1.1 and 1.0 should work

Funny you mention this.  I'm working on http.c, a module that will represent
a layer between tcp.c and open_url.c.  In this code I'll implement the guts
of HTTP.  Just a few hours of coding last night and Tuesday have resulted in
wonderful gains.

>   * segfaults should be reduced to a minimum

should == MUST!  If the initial release is too bad, nobody will come back
for subsequent releases...

>   * Remote images should be displayed

Again "MUST"!  The work that I did with url.c and the http layer that I'm
creating will allow images to be fetched as a side effect.

>   * the URL-entry field should work correctly
>   * menu-icons must be there

I'd prefer to stick to mostly back-end stuff (at least for now), but I agree
with these too.

> We should also decide whether we want Express to be dependant on GNOME
> or not, and to which degree.
> Currently it depends on gtk-xmhtml, which is in gnome-libs. We might use
> the stock GNOME icons for the menubar, as they're in gome-libs, too.
>
> But any futher gnome-specific code(gnome-about-box or gnome-menu etc.)
> would require gnome-core to be installed, I think.
>
> Do we want this? Does it matter? What do you think?
>
> If we make Express a real GNOME-app we should then also adapt the
> GNOME-coding-style etc., of course...

I would go with GNOME.  From my experience on a couple of other projects, it
makes the front-end coding very easy.  Most of the details for common things
are taken care of for you.

> Another thing is that GNOME already has a help-browser that comes close
> to what Express is/does. Some parts are also more sophisticated than the
> respective functionality in Express currently is.

Hmm.  I haven't looked at this yet.  Will do that soon; maybe I'll decide
that my efforts are misplaced...  I'll let you know.

> We have several posibilities:
>  * rip code from gnome-help-browser (GPLed too, so no problem)
>  * merge Express into gnome-help
>  * drop Express and help developing gnome-help browser

I would do this before either of the first two.

>  * keep on having two different project, maybe with Express filling
>    some special niche

There may be some features/functionality that the help browser doesn't have
that we want to put into express (ftp support?  other stuff like this?)

-Brian