Re: Why write an Ada web browser ?, was: Re: GNAT Ada - DLL - MSVC

[Preben Randhol <randhol@pvv.org>]

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Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote on 13/06/2002 (00:39) :
> I agree about it not needing to be faster than the _same_ program written
> in C. I would even accept it been a little slower. However, I would like
> to think that a properly designed Ada browser would need less resources
> than some of today's browsers.

HTML is completely screwed up. If you build a browser following the
guidelines and DTDs then 70% or perhaps more of the web sites won't be
displayed in the way they was intended. The reason is browsers have
never followed the standard and HTML is very weakly typed (like closing
tags are not necessary always etc..) So the problem becomes that the
browser is left to try to repair the mangled web pages and display them
without crashing. Therefore XHTML was made in order for handhelds and
others to be able to process homepages with their limited CPU power.

Another problem is that most users want to look at a page as fast as
they can. They don't want to wait for the whole file and all pictures
etc to be loaded before the file is displayed. So then you have to try
to do all the processing right away as it loads and this is not so easy
with HTML.

What I would like to see is a XHTML widget (using GtkAda). I mean that
the widget will only displays XHTML. Then it can also be used for other
purposes like Help dialogs etc... Then I would have a HTML -> XHTML
converter seperate from this. 

-- 
Preben Randhol         �For me, Ada95 puts back the joy in programming.�