I see, thanks Michael.

dare I ask.... moving to a different UI toolkit, could it make it easier to make Moi a crossplatform app, meaning PC/Mac? (one hopes:))

Hi olio,

> moving to a different UI toolkit, could it make it easier
> to make Moi a crossplatform app, meaning PC/Mac?
> (one hopes:))

Well, it's one step towards that anyway.

The WINE library that I mentioned previously does work on Mac as well as Linux, so that may be a way to have a Mac version without actually doing a complete port of everything.

I still don't know quite yet how it will all work out though.

- Michael

What about the Javascript engine? Will it be V8-based? I'm been looking at using V8 in some projects I'm working on, and I've been seriously impressed by its performance...

Hi Dave,

> What about the Javascript engine? Will it be V8-based?

No, it's using the regular JavaScriptCore engine (nitro) that normally goes with WebKit. But it does have the JIT engine enabled, it's fairly close in performance to V8.

- Michael

Hi Michael and all,

I'm not sure what you mean by webkit. Although, one I've found is this one at http://webkit.org/ an open source project.

I have used Moi on Linux but I find it generally a lot slower. But having Moi running 'natively' on Linux would be so cool (and useful).

Mark.

Hi Mark,

> I'm not sure what you mean by webkit. Although, one
> I've found is this one at http://webkit.org/ an open
> source project.

Yup, that's it.


> I have used Moi on Linux but I find it generally a lot slower.

Were you using a virtualization system?

The WINE system is not a virtual machine system, it actually loads and executes application code directly so if it works out it should likely be fast.

- Michael

Hi Micheal,

> Were you using a virtualization system?

No, just wine. I installed directx 9 to get Moi to run properly.

It may run slowly though because my system is P4 478 socketed PC. I'm upgrading soon so I'll let you know how the speed is then.

regards,
Mark.

P.S. I can try a virtualization install of Moi3d if the results would be useful?

Hi Mark,

> P.S. I can try a virtualization install of Moi3d if
> the results would be useful?

No, that's ok - I do know that MoI runs ok under virtualization on the Mac already.

- Michael

>No, it's using the regular JavaScriptCore engine (nitro) that normally goes with WebKit. But it does have the JIT engine enabled, it's fairly close in performance to V8.

Awesome! I've mostly been using node.js (which is built using V8), but I've also been keeping an eye on the Javascript arms race in general, so a nitro powered MoI should be pretty hot as well. It's too bad IE9 wasn't coming out about a year earlier, you might not have needed to go to all this trouble.

With all the raw scripting performance you're going to have in the new version, hopefully you'll be able to expose more functionality to the scripting API as well...

Hi Dave,

> It's too bad IE9 wasn't coming out about a year earlier,
> you might not have needed to go to all this trouble.

Well, IE9 doesn't run on Windows XP, so it would have been hard to make a dependency specifically on that.

Really the main reason why I'm switching over is to make for a more stable platform so that MoI's UI will run on the same engine on every installation, rather than depending on what version of IE is on any one particular Windows installation.

Having an increase in script performance is more of a nice side benefit...

- Michael

> Well, IE9 doesn't run on Windows XP, so it would have been hard to make a dependency specifically on that.

Doh! Forgot about that.

> Really the main reason why I'm switching over is to make for a more stable platform so that MoI's UI will run on the same engine on every installation, rather than depending on what version of IE is on any one particular Windows installation.

Sure, I get that. That will be a big win.

> Having an increase in script performance is more of a nice side benefit...

Well, I'm still hopeful about being able to do more with scripting in MoI, so WebKit/nitro sounds really exciting to me. Looking forward to trying this out sometime...

Hi Dave - also another nice benefit with being based off of a modern version of WebKit is being able to use CSS3 (with some extensions even) for the UI now. This allows for a lot more stuff like gradients and rounded corners, etc... Previously that sort of stuff was done by lots of little images.

- Michael

> Hi Dave - also another nice benefit with being based off of a modern version of WebKit is being able to use CSS3 (with some extensions even) for the UI now. This allows for a lot more stuff like gradients and rounded corners, etc... Previously that sort of stuff was done by lots of little images.

Yes, that will be extremely useful. I've been busy stocking up my library with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript books for a while now (for other projects). The <canvas> element could also prove useful for creating custom UI components as well. I'm really looking forward to getting under the hood of this new MoI version...

Hi Dave, so the only caveat is that I've got a few different chunks of WebKit disabled in order to reduce the size of the installer.

An increase in installer and download size is the major downside to switching over to the engine being included with MoI.

<canvas> does work though, but I have SVG disabled.

- Michael

> Hi Dave, so the only caveat is that I've got a few different chunks of WebKit disabled in order to reduce the size of the installer.

> An increase in installer and download size is the major downside to switching over to the engine being included with MoI.

> <canvas> does work though, but I have SVG disabled.

Hmm, I wouldn't think that could be more than a few megabytes plus or minus. Even here in the Philippines, that isn't anything to worry about. Downloading modo 501 was around 2 GB, and that didn't take all that long. Well, it's your call, but I for one would vote for providing as much function as possible. I realize you probably won't need all the bells and whistles (like SVG) for the core MoI support, but it sure seems like it opens up lots of 3rd party possibilities if you throw in the kitchen sink :-)

Hi Dave, well a few megabytes to me is significant. Just in general I place quite a bit of value on having a nice lightweight download and installation. It is true that is not valued by a lot of developers anymore but I think that's a shame though.

It seems pretty unlikely that SVG would ever get used for UI - and UI is the thing that WebKit is used for with MoI...

If someone in the future comes up with some good use for SVG for MoI UI, then that could be possible to turn back on later on.

- Michael

> Hi Dave, well a few megabytes to me is significant. Just in general I place quite a bit of value on having a nice lightweight download and installation. It is true that is not valued by a lot of developers anymore but I think that's a shame though.

I hear you. I once lead a team that sweat blood to get a complete BASIC programming environment to run in 14KB (IBM System/34 BASIC, back in the day).

> It seems pretty unlikely that SVG would ever get used for UI - and UI is the thing that WebKit is used for with MoI...

I tend to agree with you. I'm planning to use <canvas> in some other projects I'm working on, but SVG has never really appealed to me, so I won't bemoan it not being there in MoI.

> If someone in the future comes up with some good use for SVG for MoI UI, then that could be possible to turn back on later on.

Fair enough. Are there any other major functional pieces of WebKit you are planning on leaving out?

Hi Dave,

> Fair enough. Are there any other major functional pieces
> of WebKit you are planning on leaving out?

There are some other various stuff - web workers, SQL Lite database storage, video support. To enable some of these things would involve pulling in additional support libraries as well.

> I'm planning to use <canvas> in some other projects
> I'm working on, but SVG has never really appealed to
> me, so I won't bemoan it not being there in MoI.

<canvas> seems to be getting used much more frequently for interactive type stuff.

(note to others - this is referring to SVG not so much as a file format, more about its dynamic scripting object model and event handling, etc... )

- Michael

> There are some other various stuff - web workers, SQL Lite database storage, video support. To enable some of these things would involve pulling in additional support libraries as well.

More hmm...hopefully this is mostly just a matter of setting some build switches on your part and that your previous statement about presenting a compelling case for including missing WebKit components applies here as well. I'm not sure what having/not having these components means at this point, since I'm personally still trying to sort through how all these technologies fit together. But hopefully it will be easier to convince you to include one of these components than it would be to convince you to write 10,000 lines of new C++ code to implement some new MoI feature :-)

> <canvas> seems to be getting used much more frequently for interactive type stuff.

I've heard it argued that SVG presents a richer interaction model than <canvas>, since much of the DOM event handling model reaches down into and applies to the SVG elements, but I'm not really convinced. Seems to me that creating a <canvas>-based component should not be any harder than creating a custom component using any other GUI toolkit. I've got a couple of components I'm planning on implementing using <canvas>, so hopefully I'll have some first hand experience soon.