OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Internet

New Browser Delay Discussion

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Paul Smedley:

--- Quote from: Roderick Klein on April 05, 2022, 11:01:59 am ---As I stated a new RPM is being worked on by 2 people to be released via rpm.netlab.org which will be based on the new QT webkit engine...
Its taking somewhat longer to finish the RPM file and the SPEC file.

--- End quote ---

Is it just me,  or are others  starting to doubt there will ever be a new OS/2 Browser?

In February we we told “in the last week of February or the first week of March.”  there would be a beta of Otter,  then in March  there were  'issues'  and they were  switching  to  a new browser (Dooble?) and something would be available 'soon'. I thought the story was that Dmitry had things  going on and couldn't work on it,  yet  in the github  repository (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/dooble-os2)  the only checkin is by  Dmik  (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/dooble-os2/commits/main).  Something doesn't  smell right here  (IMHO).

Also, we  constantly see requests  for funds  for bww to work on the browser, yet in the regular  bww updates,  we see updates  to projects with little or anything to do with the browser.  Is  the OS/2 community also paying for these projects? The lack of  transparency is concerning.

Meanwhile, Qt 5 is end of life except for 'paid customers' https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/05/qt_lts_goes_commercial_only/

Martin Iturbide:

--- Quote from: Paul Smedley on April 15, 2022, 01:22:04 am ---
--- Quote from: Roderick Klein on April 05, 2022, 11:01:59 am ---As I stated a new RPM is being worked on by 2 people to be released via rpm.netlab.org which will be based on the new QT webkit engine...
Its taking somewhat longer to finish the RPM file and the SPEC file.

--- End quote ---

Is it just me,  or are others  starting to doubt there will ever be a new OS/2 Browser?

In February we we told “in the last week of February or the first week of March.”  there would be a beta of Otter,  then in March  there were  'issues'  and they were  switching  to  a new browser (Dooble?) and something would be available 'soon'. I thought the story was that Dmitry had things  going on and couldn't work on it,  yet  in the github  repository (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/dooble-os2)  the only checkin is by  Dmik  (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/dooble-os2/commits/main).  Something doesn't  smell right here  (IMHO).

Also, we  constantly see requests  for funds  for bww to work on the browser, yet in the regular  bww updates,  we see updates  to projects with little or anything to do with the browser.  Is  the OS/2 community also paying for these projects? The lack of  transparency is concerning.

Meanwhile, Qt 5 is end of life except for 'paid customers' https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/05/qt_lts_goes_commercial_only/

--- End quote ---

Hi Paul

I kind of think the same thing. We don't have clarity of what happened.
But in the bright side, we seen some libraries and a Qt5 port had been delivered and that was a lot of work. I can not say anything about how stable is the QtWebkit, I haven't tried it.

The sad part is not only that we don't have a browser yet, it is that we don't have more developers or group interested on creating or porting big projects for OS/2. Bitwise is the only one with will, skill and love to the platform that will take that kind of challenge.  Even if we raise money today for important projects, I don't who will take the task.

But I still think that Qt is current and has a future:
Some Ref: Google Chrome/Chromium Experimenting With A Qt Back-End

Regards

Per E. Johannessen:

--- Quote from: Paul Smedley on April 15, 2022, 01:22:04 am ---Is it just me,  or are others  starting to doubt there will ever be a new OS/2 Browser?

--- End quote ---

I have my doubts too, and the lack of information/transparency is disappointing.

Paul Smedley:
Hey Martin,


--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on April 15, 2022, 02:12:23 am ---But I still think that Qt is current and has a future:
Some Ref: Google Chrome/Chromium Experimenting With A Qt Back-End

--- End quote ---

This will be Qt6 only (I imagine). I took a quick look at Qt6 recently - they've switched to cmake as a build system, so more work todo.

I  note your comments regarding bww and major projects - I'd  narrow this down more - without Dmitry -  there are no big projects. Name one significant project bww has enabled that Dmitry/Dmik hasn't done 90%  of the work? (Happy to be proven wrong).

Dave Yeo:
Isn't Dimitry located in Russia? I always assumed so but don't actually know, but if so, there's a war along with all kinds of sanctions making doing any kind of business between Russia and the west much harder.
As for the browser, it always seemed pretty ambitious but there are very few choices left and all the choices are now becoming 64 bit, besides being fast moving targets and as Martin mentioned, we have a shortage of knowledgeable developers.
As mentioned, QT5 seems almost dead, though there is https://invent.kde.org/qt/qt consisting of backported patches from QT6 as it seems QT6 is no where near ready.
QT5 itself seems barely buildable on OS/2, here the OS crashes when trying to link I think, somewhat surprising as previous experience shows lack of memory causing wlink to die with a lack of spill memory error.
As the browsers that have been tried have not been broadly released nor their source, it is hard to say what the problems are. I have the Simplebrowser running somewhat stably here. Dooble itself seems to have died and been resurrected. It targets QT6 but does seem like it also supports QT 5.12 or newer. I tried building it, the build dies instantly as our build system doesn't understand the versionAtleast function/macro and other then the readme, no work has been done on the github code. Quite likely that there are private source trees where work is happening.
It's all opaque with most of the recent work being done by Silvan on a volunteer basis and others working on USB stuff like Joystick and camera support. Meanwhile we have fewer and fewer users, especially users on bare metal.
As for projects, wasn't OpenOffice others besides dmik? Though that's getting on the old side now.

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