[Lazarus] The future of desktop

Michael Van Canneyt michael at freepascal.org
Sat Nov 30 15:48:09 CET 2013



On Sat, 30 Nov 2013, silvioprog wrote:

> 2013/11/30 Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org>
>       On Sat, 30 Nov 2013, silvioprog wrote:
>
>             2013/11/30 Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org>
>                   [...]
>                   I want to program the browser itself. In Pascal.
> 
>
>             Hello Michael,
>
>             Why not use an existing webkit (like Qt or Chrome) and incorporate it into Lazarus? That would leave the
>             responsibility for compatibility
>             with HTML5, CSS3, mp3 encode, webGL, file manipulation, , support for cross-platform etc. for the webkit.
> 
>
>       You are missing the point, I think.
>
>       The idea is not to create a new widgetset.
>
>       The idea is just to be able to program in pascal, output Javascript.
>
>       Using some kind of 'external' declarations would enable you to use Adobe Air,
>       ExtJS, Node.js, Jquery, Kendo UI, node-webkit, Dojo or whatever you see fit.
>
>       I am not making any assumptions on that.
>
>       But, and this is what I miss in all other attempts mentioned here: I want to be able to program the browser WITHOUT
>       necessarily having an application server running on a webserver.
>
>       It must be possible to ship a HTML file and a Javascript file for a working application. That's it.
> 
> 
> But that is exactly what the node-webkit does, however, using a webkit ready, and without a HTTP server. But node-webkit uses JS, so the
> idea would be to use Pascal. E.g., in a pseudo code, would be:

Node-webkit still requires an external binary to be shipped somewhere, like Adobe Air. 
It emulates a browser.

That is not what I am trying to accomplish.

Using my approach, you will be able to use node-webkit, if you want to. All I will do in the first place
is convert pascal to Javascript. What you decide to do with that (how to interact with the browser or 
node-webkit, or whatever) is up to you. Once I have the Javascript part running, I will see how to 
integrate this with Lazarus so it can be used to design your web applications. Whether this will be 
with an existing webkit (and which one) or not is entirely up for discussion, and not relevant at this point.

Michael.


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