Nokia Engineers on KHTML 98
Rich writes "KDE could soon be making its way into your mobile phone. At aKademy in August David Carson and Deepika Chauhan from Nokia presented the work they've done in integrating KDE components into the latest version of the company's mobile phone software. Philip Rodrigues discusses this work with them on dot.kde.org."
Re:KHTML? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT) (Score:5, Informative)
WebCore is LGPL. They have to make their changes available to people who buy their 'phones (they also have to allow their customers to use a different version of WebCore, which could be interesting). They do not have to contribute their changes directly back to Apple, but they probably will since it is usually much easier to contribute patches than maintain a fork (note that this didn't apply to Apple when they forked KHTML, since they were throwing more developer time at the codebase than KHTML had in total, so it was easier to fork).
Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT) (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. If you think specifically of KDE/QT - check out what runs on zaurus, ipaq, and whatnot [handhelds.org], but you have to remember that this is Qtopia, not the same thing you have as a kde desktop, although resourcewise, KDE is becoming lighter and lighter...
Also, they speak about a rendering engine, not a GUI/OS solution (and afaik Nokia did a browser using khtml but with GTK UI).
Re:KHTML? (Score:2, Informative)
After all, Apple have had some success with Quicktime on mobile devices and Nokia like that kind of stuff.
There's been all kinds of talk of Apple and Nokia gettin' all cozy on some smart phone stuff, but nothing has been confirmed, yet...
Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT) (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh, this again. In X when the client and the server are on the same machine, communication is by local Unix sockets, which are the fastest form of IPC on Linux. Keith Packard wrote a new X server (kdrive) to demonstrate that X doesn't have to be slow, and he was right: the "overhead" of the client/server communication is nothing compared to the time it takes smaller systems to draw.
Re:Small RAM footprint (Score:4, Informative)
KHTML has a far lower footprint than something like GECKO(mozilla firefox).
Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT) (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA:
Re: KHTML (Score:5, Informative)
http://gtk-webcore.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
From the page: "Gtk+ WebCore is a Linux/Gtk+ port of Apple Computer Inc.'s WebCore KHTML html rendering engine including a web component. A reference browser implementation is included in the project. Gtk+ WebCore is a standards compliant (X)HTML rendering engine, javascript interpreter and an embeddable web component. The purpose of the web component is to be a light-weight, easy-to-compile and embed, open source rendering component.
The project work is done at Nokia Research Center (NRC) as part of ongoing internet browser-related research activities. By releasing the source we hope to support in open source communities interested in using KHTML rendering engine component."
Re:KHTML? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Another feature to run down the battery... (Score:2, Informative)
I run a Microsoft / Orange SPV C500 and its loaded with features.. MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc - I use it heavily for SMS texting (250/month roughly) and make about 2 or 3 calls a week on average and it usually lasts me about 5 days between charging. Its small too!
Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT) (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT) (Score:5, Informative)
True.
That's an interesting but (IMO) false interpretation of the LGPL.