Re: Why Emacs should have a good web-browser

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

Miles> Please give more details about what you mean. Emacs' display
Miles> engine is not simple, and much code relies on its (many)
Miles> features. It would seem quit difficult to make it use
Miles> a high-level display toolkit with very different abstractions.

> This is a very naïve suggestion, as I dont know much of emacs display
> engine. I just notice that emacs wants to display formated text, with
> hyperlinks, colors, pictures, antialiasing, etc. All of that (and much
> more, like complex layouts, tables, etc) is already very well adressed
> in an xhtml/css+js engine such as gecko or webkit, both free software
> and available for integration in third party applications.

It might be possible to use one of those engines as Emacs's rendering
engine, indeed.  To me, it wouldn't seem like an good solution to the
problem at hand because I don't think it would allow me to control the
web-browser from Emacs (e.g., how would I access from Elisp the content
of pages generated from HTML?).  So it'd be more like embedding Emacs
inside a normal browser.  It's not a bad idea, but I don't think it'll
provide as many benefits from Emacs's point of view.


        Stefan