Mozilla gets support for other client-side languages in the future, how about Ruby?

Interesting slides:

http://www.mozilla.org/events/dev-day-feb-2004/mozilla-futures/

Python support is already planned. It would be really cool to be able to
develop XUL or Intranet web applications with client side Ruby as well.

Erik.

Erik Terpstra wrote:

http://www.mozilla.org/events/dev-day-feb-2004/mozilla-futures/

Python support is already planned. It would be really cool to be able to
develop XUL or Intranet web applications with client side Ruby as well.

Indeed. I’m waiting for the days where I can write cross-platform
application using just Ruby and YAML. No Javascript please (Python is
better, but it’s definitely not Ruby). No XML please. (XUL will be
layered so we can write descriptions using YAML). Did I say No XML please?

It’s really quite painful right now creating “regular” desktop
applications using Ruby, especially on Win32 (no OS threads, no
mature+complete GUI toolkit).

Aided with future goodies like native win32 PostgreSQL and Parrot/Ruby2
VM, I think I’ll have no traces of inferiority complex when being
around my fellow .NET/Mono junkies :slight_smile:

···


dave

Erik Terpstra wrote:

Interesting slides:

http://www.mozilla.org/events/dev-day-feb-2004/mozilla-futures/

Python support is already planned. It would be really cool to be able to
develop XUL or Intranet web applications with client side Ruby as well.

Erik.

Having ruby supported would be cool indeed. I guess the only need is people wanting to do it :slight_smile:

Raph

In article 4045ED71.7010800@be.easynet.net,

Erik Terpstra wrote:

Interesting slides:

http://www.mozilla.org/events/dev-day-feb-2004/mozilla-futures/

Python support is already planned. It would be really cool to be able to
develop XUL or Intranet web applications with client side Ruby as well.

Erik.

Having ruby supported would be cool indeed. I guess the only need is
people wanting to do it :slight_smile:

Looking on Ruby-talk archives I see that someone is willing to offer a
reward for doing the C-work needed to allow Mozilla to be scripted from
Ruby (I’m not sure why that article isn’t showing up on my newsfeed, btw).
No details on how much money being offered…

If there were some way to script Mozilla with Ruby & XUL I could use it
right now for a project at work.

How much work is involved? Anyone have any idea?

Phil

···

Raphael Bauduin raphael.bauduin@be.easynet.net wrote:

ptkwt@aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) wrote in message news:c3d5oc01bkp@enews4.newsguy.com

Looking on Ruby-talk archives I see that someone is willing to offer a
reward for doing the C-work needed to allow Mozilla to be scripted from
Ruby (I’m not sure why that article isn’t showing up on my newsfeed, btw).
No details on how much money being offered…

That someone was me, and I was talking about a fund, specifically.
What I’m willing to offer alone probably isn’t worth the effort for
the developer, but if several people were also willing to “pledge
support”, or if Dave sets up his non-profit fund, then it’d probably
be able to buy several hours worth of a developer’s time. A good C
developer, with some knowledge of the Mozilla code base, could
probably hack out the basics of it within a few hours. That’d be
enough to get started, I think.

If there were some way to script Mozilla with Ruby & XUL I could use it
right now for a project at work.

Ditto.

How much work is involved? Anyone have any idea?

Again, I don’t know, not knowing the details of what would be
involved. A really basic interface, as I said, probably wouldn’t take
more than a few hours. What gets tricky (or takes up time) is stuff
like:

  1. Packaging and documentation.
  2. Sandboxing (not important for local apps, but critical if
    distributed apps are a target)
  3. The DOM interface

I suspect that much of the IPC work has been already done in the XPCOM
project; there may be an opportunity for code reuse there.

The DOM interface is the major mechanism for communicating between
code and the HTML rendering engine. Sandboxing is a complex issue;
security concerns are what are going to be the real ass-biter in the
long run. However, as I’ve said, one partial goal for this would be
simply to enable another GUI toolkit for Ruby, one that is already
widespread. This in itself would make the project worthwhile. The
long-term goal, of being able to use Mozilla as a remote application
platform, is the holy grail.

— SER

Sean Russell wrote:

If there were some way to script Mozilla with Ruby & XUL I could use it
right now for a project at work.

Ditto.

Double-ditto.

How much work is involved? Anyone have any idea?

Again, I don’t know, not knowing the details of what would be
involved. A really basic interface, as I said, probably wouldn’t take
more than a few hours. What gets tricky (or takes up time) is stuff
like:

  1. Packaging and documentation.
  2. Sandboxing (not important for local apps, but critical if
    distributed apps are a target)
  3. The DOM interface

I suspect that much of the IPC work has been already done in the XPCOM
project; there may be an opportunity for code reuse there.

SeaMonkey is the Mozilla subproject that implements JavaScript, and it is
not dependent on Mozilla (i.e. it can be embedded in other applications). So
the thing to do would be to locate the glue code that binds the SeaMonkey
JavaScript implementation to rest of Mozilla.

Hopefully, this could would be isolated in a single module (or small set of
modules) that could be cloned and then modified for Ruby.

Curt

···

Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.610 / Virus Database: 390 - Release Date: 3/3/2004

Again, I don’t know, not knowing the details of what would be
involved. A really basic interface, as I said, probably wouldn’t take
more than a few hours. What gets tricky (or takes up time) is stuff
like:

[…]

  1. The DOM interface

The DOM interface is the major mechanism for communicating between
code and the HTML rendering engine.

I don’t think you have to worry too much about this, it seems to be
fully XPCOM-ified:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/dom/idl/

···

Sean Russell (ser@germane-software.com) wrote:


Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
All messages signed with fingerprint:
FEC2 57F1 D465 EB15 5D6E 7C11 332A 551C 796C 9F04

SeaMonkey is the codename for the Mozilla application suite,
SpiderMonkey is the codename for the JS engine written in C, and Rhino
is the codename for the Js engine written in Java.

See:

http://mozilla.org/js/

···

Curt Hibbs (curt@hibbs.com) wrote:

SeaMonkey is the Mozilla subproject that implements JavaScript


Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
All messages signed with fingerprint:
FEC2 57F1 D465 EB15 5D6E 7C11 332A 551C 796C 9F04

Eric Hodel wrote:

SeaMonkey is the Mozilla subproject that implements JavaScript

SeaMonkey is the codename for the Mozilla application suite,
SpiderMonkey is the codename for the JS engine written in C, and Rhino
is the codename for the Js engine written in Java.

See:

Firefox - Protect your life online with privacy-first products — Mozilla
http://mozilla.org/js/

Oops… you’re right! (I’ve been away from Mozilla development for a year
and a half).

Curt

···

Curt Hibbs (curt@hibbs.com) wrote: