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Hipe is a graphics layer and window system for Linux based on Webkit, using nested HTML tags which applications manipulate directly to create a GUI.
It aims to provide functionality equivalent to existing systems like X (on Unix-like systems) or Quartz (on Apple OS-X), but using HTML with CSS as the display language. (For comparison, Apple's Quartz uses PDF encoding.)
Unlike a web browser, Hipe does not use HTTP. Instead, applications use a public-domain API to connect to the Hipe display server, then manipulate a DOM-tree of HTML elements directly. Annoyances like page refreshes are done away with.
Why use HTML? Because it's ubiquitous. Everyone is using it and everyone already knows how to use it.
Why use a browser engine for an OS-level display layer? Because content rendering and layout is *hard*. Decades of development have seen web browser engines become very capable indeed. Meanwhile, native OS display capabilities have lagged behind. Time to fix that.
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