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From: "Peter C. Chapin" <pcc482719@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Web browser in Ada
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:38:49 -0400
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Date: 2010-04-23T20:38:49-04:00
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Gautier write-only wrote:

> My impression is that a good part of vulnerabilities are indeed within
> plug-ins, another good part is between the browser and a plug-in
> (typically, browser X need to be patched but not the others nor the
> plug-in), and the third part, important as well, is about CSS,
> JavaScript, image storage or decoding, XML, HTML parsing and other
> core parts of browsers.

I had actually thought that building a web browser in Ada would be a nice
project (if only I had more time!). I'm not sure how much of a difference in
security it would make... probably some.

Any browser that could be realistically used would need to support JavaScript.
While an Ada JavaScript implementation might (or might not) be more secure
than a C implementation, it seems to me that any vulnerability related to the
JavaScript language itself would still be a risk.

In any case, the real benefit of such a project would be more in the
development of associated libraries and supporting code (imagine processing,
HTML parsing and rendering, CSS handling, etc, etc)... and in the visibility
a successful project would give to Ada. I suspect Ada was first standardized
before many current web developers were born; it might be fun to see what
sort of reception an Ada web browser project would get in that community.

Anyway a good first step might be the implementation of an HTML 5 parser in
Ada. Rather than playing catch-up that would put an Ada web browser project
right in the thick of the bleeding edge of the web world.

Peter