I don't see how this is an issue, in theory at least. I suppose the communication with the embedded process looks like : you transmit user information (keypresses, mouse clicks), and get back graphics. Let's say you have done C-x 2, and have two windows of the same web buffer. You scroll the top one, emacs sends to the process "hey man, scroll down". Which triggers a GTK redisplay, and both windows are scrolled. Sure, you don't have independance of the two windows, but that's not that important, is it ? Feel free to correct me if that view is overly naive. 2008/9/8 Thomas Lord > Antoine Levitt wrote: > >> Having browser windows in emacs would also allow allow users to benefit >> from emacs window capabilities (fuzzy completion with ido-mode, >> listing/filter with ibuffer, tabs, side-by-side splitting, and basically >> whatever else folks decide to code in elisp). Classical web browser >> basically have tabs, and keybindings to next/previous tabs. Emacs would make >> it much more powerful. >> Besides, as many people noted, it shouldn't be hard to do, since >> technologies to do so already exist. IMHO, the tough step is getting text >> and textboxes recognised by emacs, but even without that, it'd still be >> amazing. >> Good luck to you joakim, and please consider browsers as an equally useful >> target of embedding as multimedia apps. >> > > It won't work, unfortunately. It's a lovely fantasy for > a nice system -- I like the sentiment -- but it won't (can't) > work: > > Emacs has the concept that two windows can look at the same > buffer. > > HTML/DOM/CSS/Javascript are based on the assumption > that only one window exists for a given page. This > assumption is deeply reflected in the APIs and data structures. > > Imagining an Emacs window containing a browser view > of some page, any behavior you define for what C-x 2 > (split-window-vertically) does (for example) will have > to be kludgey. Javascript expects a single window. > Events aren't tagged with a window. Geometry control, > spread over the DOM and CSS, is often in terms of the > absolute geometry of the One window. It's really, > really, deeply rooted. > > This is one that W3C/ECMA got badly wrong, unfortunately. > There's no way to fix it thoroughly other than several > new W3C/ECMA standards that deprecate several existing > standards with which there won't be upward compatibility. > Basically, standards committees will need to pick a kludge, > describe that in several different standards, and then make > up entirely new and incompatible alternatives to the > kludge. They really messed up (if you believe that multiple > views on a single model are important). > > > -t > > >