MAXGUI: Linux HTMLView is rusbbish

Okay, so this is not *precisely* a bug, and not wholly under BRL control, but admit it, the Linux HTMLView is really not functional as it stands. Something needs to be done to get this gadget working at a reasonable level on Linux, if only to get the Linux IDE into a fit state!

See the thread below for details:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=54186

They are aware of it. I have been pestering them for months now.

No, the Linux HTMLView is not great at the moment but it's the best we can do.

Unfortunately (unlike Windows/MacOS), Linux does not have a built in web/html library so we must depend on a third party library. We will NOT be writing one from scratch ourselves.

We have been looking for a replacement for a while now but keep running into technical and/or licensing issues.

If anyone knows of an HTML rendering library that can be slotted cleanly - and legally - into Max, please let us know.

I don't know how easy Gecko is, but it is a prime candidate for good cross platform HTML stuffs.

If it's any consolation, the Windows HTMLView is rubbish aswell as it uses Internet Explorer, which is rubbish at math, and rubbish at CSS. At least Linux users are aware they're using a rubbish HTMLView.

I recomend Gecko.

As far as I can tell, the Gecko licensing seems reasonable enough.

Starting here, on the Gecko layout engine page (where they don't specifically state the license terms as far as I can see)...

http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/

... and hitting "Get the Source"...

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Download_Mozilla_Source_Code

... they state "This code is covered by the Netscape Public License and Mozilla Public License", which is linked here...

http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/

... where they say "All of the code which makes up the core Mozilla products is licensed under a MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license or a licence compatible with all three of those (e.g. the BSD licence). Other code in our repository may have different licensing terms."

If you go for the BSD license, my understanding is that you can basically do what you like with the code as long as you provide the boilerplate BSD license text along with your application. (Ahem... "I am not a lawyer.")


Bah, anti-M$ drivel. Works fine here, and on most of the Interweb!

Speaking as a web developer, I have to say that IE is a dog to develop anything for, they have their own "special" MS standards for things that should be simple.

Like conveniently converting the headers of all jpeg images you upload using a file input, to image/pjpeg (instead of the STANDARD image/jpeg).

That is one of the less annoying things about it, there are far sneakier and more insidious things.

That's because most of the Interweb bends over backwards to ensure their stuff works on archaic, insecure, rubbish software, that happens to be rediculously popular. Don't take my word for it, ask any web developer and they'll tell you the same story. Hell ask Microsoft. Developing a website takes twice as long if it needs to look and feel the same in Internet Explorer as it does in any actually standards compliant browser.

IE7 is much better than previous instances ...
And in the end it is just simpler to use a system component instead of writting something that will fail badly in the end ... tousand of commercial super hyper companies do it (so far any tools that came for autoupdating etc use a IE gadget to show their content) ...

FFS This is not an Internet Explorer thread, please don't kill off this very important topic about getting htmlview working in LINUX.

Regarding gecko: Seems to me that the embedding project is what you are looking for: www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/

Mozilla isn't perfect either, it still has quite a few web standards issues. You could make your web site look nice in IE and Mozilla and it would still be broken in Amaya.

I don't have anything against embedded gecko except that it's a bit heavy. Any blitzmax app that uses it will balloon in size.

For you maybe. Not for me. For me this is about getting consistent HTMLViews across multiple platforms. I don't particularly care if its gecko or triumph or something else entirely. I just want my Windows, Mac and Linux applications to consistenly show the same HTML and CSS on all platforms. I don't want to have to sit around thinking up stupid CSS hacks for Windows and other stupid CSS hacks for Mac, and even more for Linux. I want one HTML page to display the same across all three platforms. I don't think that's asking too much.

at least consistent on the true OS (OSX / Windows - Linux has no standardation for nothing so why should it try to follow it for something "unimportant" as HTML) would really be needed.