KHTML & WebKit, Qt-4.4, Unity,... ??????

[riaan]

Hi Uwe

Maybe you could shed some light on something that I have been wondering about as I'm getting conflicting info from all around.

What I know: Mid 2007 Ars Technica published an article about the unforking of KHTML and WebKit:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/07/23/the-unforking-of-kdes-khtml-and-webkit

Apparently TrollTech will incorporate WebKit into Qt-4.4 and I have seen claims that KDE 4 has the necessary bindings to swap KHTML and WebKit to use in Konqueror. Apparently Kubuntu have done this on their KDE4 LiveCD and is considering to make it the default choice.

I have heard rumours of a joint KDE-Apple project called (codenamed?) "Unity" that could eventually replace KHTML and WebKit on both Linux/KDE and MacOS X. I have also heard that Gnome, after abandoning Mozilla's Gecko for KHTML in the form of GTKHTML, will now also abandon KHTML/GTKHTML to move to WebKit proper.

What's happening on this front and how will TrollTech's incorporation of WebKit into Qt affect KDE and the use of KHTML? Would KDE enable to users in a later release, say 4.1, to choose between KHTML and WebKit? Or will both eventually be replaced by a unified successor?

BTW, I'm compiling KDE-4.0.0 as I'm writing this (112 of 156) and I'm really impressed by the visual effect and performance enhancements w.r.t. compilation times that KDE's switch to cmake made!

Regards
Riaan

[uwe]

My impression is that, despite some resistance from hardcore khtml developers, WebKit will become KDE's HTML engine.

This has not been done for KDE 4.0.0. The main stumbling block is that khtml is a kpart while WebKit is not. Kparts can be embedded in any KDE applications. So konqueror is not the problem - it can use WebKit as an engine. Other applications that use khtml are. It would be rather embarrassing if different KDE applications rendered the same HTML code differently. So you want the same engine in all applications. This left only khtml.

Yes, WebKit will be part of Qt 4.4.

Though I haven't seen the Kubuntu KDE4 LiveCD, I doubt that they have done what you claim. KDE 4.0.0 does not link against Qt 4.4 - KDE 4.1 will. I guess, that will be the point when the HTML engines get switched.

As for Unity, that was a rumour back in 2006. Probably more than just a rumour. When Qt embraced WebKit and quite some KDE developers did as well, Unity became dead in the water. That's my take of it at least.

AFAIK, GNOME never adopted GtkHTML as their default HTML engine. Moreover, GtkHTML isn't just a wrapper around khtml. It's a complete re-write of khtml in C. I also doubt that GNOME will embrace WebKit which is written in C++ like khtml. It's very simple for a C++ application to link to a C library. It's far, far more complicated for a C application to link to a C++ library. That is also the reason why all common technologies among GNOME and KDE are written in C rather than in C++.

I don't know whether KDE 4.1 will let users switch between HTML engines. My very personal guess is that one technology will eventually die. Whether this will happen before or after 4.1 is everyone's guess. Yours is as good as mine. ;-)

Hope this clarifies at least some things. ;-)

As for cmake, yes, it is far simpler as well as faster than auto[make|conf]. I have this little pet project of mine, iwy. The source code tarball is about 1MB in size of which 900+KB are the build system auto[make|conf]. This is insane in terms of size as well as in terms of complexity. Cmake build systems are far simplier, far smaller and far faster.

Actually, the history of cmake is interesting as it shows an successful interoperation between business and open source. There is this KDE developer Alexander Neundorf who also owns an IT company. One day, he got completely fed up with the insanity of autotools. So he instructed his developers to create something new as OSS. When they had a first working version of cmake, they immediately offered it to KDE because KDE is a big an complicated project that really taxes it. Well, in the end we all won.

Uwe

[riaan]

Hi Uwe

See the following web-page, second paragraph, second sentence:
http://www.kubuntu.org/announcements/kde4-rc2.php

It reads: "This CD includes a preview of the Konqueror Webkit engine."

Regards
Riaan