OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Internet => Topic started by: Paul Smedley on April 15, 2022, 01:22:04 am

Title: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 15, 2022, 01:22:04 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.

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/
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Martin Iturbide on April 15, 2022, 02:12:23 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.

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/

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 (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Chromium-Qt-WIP)

Regards
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on April 15, 2022, 03:13:32 am
Is it just me,  or are others  starting to doubt there will ever be a new OS/2 Browser?

I have my doubts too, and the lack of information/transparency is disappointing.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 15, 2022, 03:15:55 am
Hey Martin,

But I still think that Qt is current and has a future:
Some Ref: Google Chrome/Chromium Experimenting With A Qt Back-End (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Chromium-Qt-WIP)

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).
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dave Yeo on April 15, 2022, 03:36:52 am
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 (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.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on April 15, 2022, 04:32:48 am
Guys...I do not want to be seen as only pouring fuel on the fire, but I honestly think it behooves us to come up with another browser option if the OS/2 platform is to survive in ANY sort of form and/or shape. This is BTW coming from a guy who's been running OS/2 ONLY on bare metal all these years...so you bet your "you know what" that committment is here!

Anyways, I bring back my suggestion to completely off-load the browser chores to a tiny bare metal platform where you can convert the darn box into an App server.

Literally, these things come in the tiniest of formats, some actually will attach to the back of your monitor's VESA bracket/mount and all you basically need is a power cable running to it (most are WiFI based, of course you can run a CAT cable if you want/prefer). Cost here is a couple of hundred USD, wide range of power hardware available, so you can pick something up for as little as $75. It is that cheap b/c it has no powerful GPU, crazy amount of RAM, or big SDD.

Combine that with a RDP solution like FreeRDP and our problems are nearly solved.

Heck, I'b be much happier pouring more money into fixing the current FreeRDP memory leaks than putting that cash into a native browser build.

Further on, we could all probably figure out the best combo to configure for our needs, and such a standard build could become an "off the shelf" solution for our use. Yes, I do literally mean: we should build an App Server image and make that available so that anyone else who wants to stand one of these tiny platforms just orders the hardware, dumps the image on there and installs FreeRDP on his/her current OS/2 box.

As they say: just my 2-cents!
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Mentore on April 15, 2022, 08:17:14 am
Guys...I do not want to be seen as only pouring fuel on the fire, but I honestly think it behooves us to come up with another browser option if the OS/2 platform is to survive in ANY sort of form and/or shape. This is BTW coming from a guy who's been running OS/2 ONLY on bare metal all these years...so you bet your "you know what" that committment is here!

Anyways, I bring back my suggestion to completely off-load the browser chores to a tiny bare metal platform where you can convert the darn box into an App server.

Literally, these things come in the tiniest of formats, some actually will attach to the back of your monitor's VESA bracket/mount and all you basically need is a power cable running to it (most are WiFI based, of course you can run a CAT cable if you want/prefer). Cost here is a couple of hundred USD, wide range of power hardware available, so you can pick something up for as little as $75. It is that cheap b/c it has no powerful GPU, crazy amount of RAM, or big SDD.

Combine that with a RDP solution like FreeRDP and our problems are nearly solved.

Heck, I'b be much happier pouring more money into fixing the current FreeRDP memory leaks than putting that cash into a native browser build.

Further on, we could all probably figure out the best combo to configure for our needs, and such a standard build could become an "off the shelf" solution for our use. Yes, I do literally mean: we should build an App Server image and make that available so that anyone else who wants to stand one of these tiny platforms just orders the hardware, dumps the image on there and installs FreeRDP on his/her current OS/2 box.

As they say: just my 2-cents!

Not a bad idea, just a little cumbersome maybe? Dunno. Maybe it's just me and my somehow schizofrenic way of seeing things: from one side, I'm thinking about building a linux eeePC nettop cluster solution just for fun (I've got six of these little boxes), from the other side I'm still attached to a one-box solution. I'm getting old, it seems  ;D

But yes: it's really an interesting idea IMHO. Also, in the current environment shifting to 64 bit there's not much time left.

I still have to finish a bare metal box (just found an used i3 machine which may be of use somehow) but time is short and chores increasing - plus, my wife gave birth to our son Gabriele 20 days ago, so I really don't know if/when I will be able to contribute again to software solutions on OS/2 platforms.

But HECK, how I miss working on the WPS.

Mentore
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Jan-Erik Lärka on April 15, 2022, 09:06:50 am
Congratulations Mentore, proud father one can presume  :)
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 15, 2022, 10:00:41 am
Hey Dave,
As for projects, wasn't OpenOffice others besides dmik? Though that's getting on the old side now.

My recollection is that OpenOffice was based on Star Office - and the core OS/2 code was still present. As I recall, Yuri did the original work- at some point, Yuri came in to the BWW fold...
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 15, 2022, 10:02:21 am
I still have to finish a bare metal box (just found an used i3 machine which may be of use somehow) but time is short and chores increasing - plus, my wife gave birth to our son Gabriele 20 days ago, so I really don't know if/when I will be able to contribute again to software solutions on OS/2 platforms.

Congrats on the new member of the family!
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Mentore on April 15, 2022, 10:19:42 am
Congratulations Mentore, proud father one can presume  :)

Proud and happy I dare say :)
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Mentore on April 15, 2022, 10:20:23 am
I still have to finish a bare metal box (just found an used i3 machine which may be of use somehow) but time is short and chores increasing - plus, my wife gave birth to our son Gabriele 20 days ago, so I really don't know if/when I will be able to contribute again to software solutions on OS/2 platforms.

Congrats on the new member of the family!

Thanks a million Paul, I'll let him into OS/2 ASAP :D
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Roderick Klein on April 15, 2022, 11:28:23 am
I did send out a news message via OS/2 VOICE why the browser was delayed. Its because of the events surrounding Ukraine. Dmitry has not been able to work on the browser for close to 6 weeks. Another team of volunteers has worked on an RPM package that contains the Dooble browser.
This will use the latest port of the QT to OS/2. That RPM package is being build right now. That should be released this week or beginning next week in rpm.netlabs.org. A news item will be send out when its ready.

Best regards,

Roderick Klein
OS/2 VOICE
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Martin Iturbide on April 15, 2022, 02:11:01 pm
FYI: I slip the topic since it didn't fall on the other thread.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Roderick Klein on April 15, 2022, 03:29:48 pm
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 (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.

Yes Dmitry was located in Russia, until recently. But he has moved out recently...
I know 2 people that next to Dmitry can work with QT 5.12 and can compile it on there system.
So if you have an issue then describe how it fails ? Elbert Pole I think can compile QT 5.12 and possibly also Gregg Young.

I understood it correctly from Dmitry updates of QT 5.X is still supported another for QT webkit updates. Or maybe longer.

Roderick
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on April 15, 2022, 03:36:53 pm
First thing first: Congratulations Mentore!!!

Not a bad idea, just a little cumbersome maybe? Dunno. Maybe it's just me and my somehow schizofrenic way of seeing things: from one side, I'm thinking about building a linux eeePC nettop cluster solution just for fun (I've got six of these little boxes), from the other side I'm still attached to a one-box solution. I'm getting old, it seems  ;D

But yes: it's really an interesting idea IMHO. Also, in the current environment shifting to 64 bit there's not much time left...

Like you, I have never been able to pull myself away from the sheer "natural" way that one can interact with the WPS. Yes, it sure has its ugly side, but all in all it still beats a slew of other options that are out there.

Today I rely on the very option I laid out to get me an up-to-date browser config w/o physically shifting to another machine. I do this only b/c I have a couple of other PCs on the home LAN (they are all Win boxes) so putting one of them to work serving my OS/2 needs only seemed fitting! lol

For those who do not have such an option, one of these micro hardware platforms is absolutely the way to go.

Look, I'm always hoping that we will have something native, but I'd rather not find myself barelling towards the wall at full speed. Instead I'd rather have the option to slam on the brakes and make a turn before the inevitable end comes.

Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on April 15, 2022, 04:26:32 pm
I tried Dooble on Ubuntu, and it isn't that much more stable than Firefox 45 on OS/2. But it works on modern websites. I'll bet something can be made for our environment that is good enough.

I see a lot of users on the sidelines, looking for a chance to move to an OS/2-based platform. Once we have any kind of reasonable browser, the most important obstacle will be removed for these people to make their move.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Eugene Tucker on April 15, 2022, 05:40:24 pm
Has anyone else tried David Yeo's latest distros of Firefox, Sea Monkey and thunderbird? I can get to NewEgg.com now they are better than the last versions.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: ivan on April 16, 2022, 12:08:35 am
As an aside I got round the browser problem by converting one of my older AMD ITX units to Linux Mint 20 and use an HDMI/USB KVM switch to feed the output to my 28 inch monitor or its own 24 inch monitor.  It works for me, but I am thinking of just using the 24 inch monitor for the browser and leave the 28 inch monitor for my work.  Because everything is on my local lan anything from the browser can be used on my main OS/2 machine.

The only beef I have with the newer firefox is their stupid idea of putting the tabs at the top instead of over what they apply to which means messing about with userChrome.css and they seem to change something with each new version which means a new css is required.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Tom on April 16, 2022, 12:22:15 am
I understood it correctly from Dmitry updates of QT 5.X is still supported another for QT webkit updates. Or maybe longer.

You are referring to his observations in https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qt5-os2/issues/16#issue-823359053 (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qt5-os2/issues/16#issue-823359053) and https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qt5-os2/issues/16#issuecomment-791637493 (https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qt5-os2/issues/16#issuecomment-791637493) ?

Athough it seems that the Qt Company recently (march 2022) released an opensource version of Qt 5.15.3 :

https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042262.html (https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042262.html)

(that is more than one year since releasing version 5.15.2, that dmik ported to OS/2)
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 16, 2022, 01:02:28 am
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.

largely for shits  and giggles,  I'm checking out the source now and will try and build it and see how far I get.

Cheers,

Paul
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 16, 2022, 01:09:12 am
Hey Roderick,

I did send out a news message via OS/2 VOICE why the browser was delayed. Its because of the events surrounding Ukraine. Dmitry has not been able to work on the browser for close to 6 weeks.

With the greatest  of respect  - if this latest  delay was the first that had been seen,  I don't think anyone would be complaining.

Remember that in November *2020* we heard  that builds were in the hands of beta testers -  yet almost 18 months later there seems to have been little progress beyond this; let alone the original roadmap from April *2018* (4 years ago) that documented an 18 month road  map.

Cheers,

Paul
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dmitriy Kuminov on April 17, 2022, 01:09:20 am
Hey all. I don’t think that using phrases like «doesn’t smell right» is a good way to start a public discussion - I find it provocative and offensive.

Now regarding the matter of the topic (browser delay et al).

I was virtually paralysed when Russia invaded Ukraine and started a war by the end of February. I couldn’t do anything besides thinking on how catastrophic this is for everyone. When I caught my breath I realised that I can’t stand it any longer and need to leave Russia ASAP. It’s not only that it became impossible to do business due to all the sanctions. It’s mostly because I couldn’t tolerate what’s going on. I couldn’t be part of the country that turned into 1930’s Germany (even though I was born there and spent there all my entire life except one year). The least I could do is leave. So I was completely occupied with organising an immediate relocation (with the help of my friends, including some OS/2 folks, as well as some guys from the independent news outlet I also work for).

As I was getting closer to the leave, I got some confidence back and made myself work on the browser a bit between solving numerous move out problems. I don’t understand why this became a subject to criticism as if it were better if hadn’t done this. A few days ago I finally left Russia and plan to stay in Turkey for a while. Currently I’m a person with no home and no residence permit anywhere but Russia (where I’m not going to get back) — and this exposes a huge number of every day problems, starting from inability to have a bank account (and therefore bank cards) to prohibition to stay in a country for more than three months in a row (so I need to move between countries until I get a permit). So until this is solved somehow, my life situation remains volatile and my resources are very limited (in addition to limitations that were already there before the war).

Regarding the overall progress. Our first plan was Otter Browser. We made it to a beta but then decided that it’s not stable enough to be released widely. In parallel, we discovered that there is another Qt-based browser called Dooble. Tests have shown that despite using the very same engine (Chromium) Dooble appears to be more stable than Otter. So we decided to go with Dooble instead. Pretty much simple.

I also want to mention that bww income has dramatically reduced within the last couple of years (mostly because there is not enough parties willing to pay for what we do). I was working full time for bww for many years but last year I realised it can’t go that way anymore because bww just didn’t have enough money to pay me the full salary. I was underpaid for a few months. So I started doing some other stuff in parallel and this of course affected the progress of all our OS/2 projects, including the browsers. Silvan and I were talking about all this more than once. This is the current state of reality.

Regarding updates having «little to do with the browser». This is simply not true. I’m actually surprised Paul is writing such things because he is pretty much capable to understand how things work. Almost everything bww have been doing recently eventually relates to the browser. I’m not talking about small library and tool updates that take little time - I’m talking about updating LIBCn, LIBCx, GCC, Python and a bunch of core tools and libs. All these are needed either for the browser itself or are part of the Qt/Chromium tool chain. In fact, the reason we update them usually is to make Qt/Chromium work.

Also, it’s not true that there is some private source code for the OS/2 versions of Qt/Chromium/Otter/Dooble/whatever. Every single line of code we do is published and every project is buildable from scratch. We (bww) have some private repos but they have nothing to do with the projects we collect money for from the community within the browser campaign. I don’t think that it’s OK to even spread rumours like these without knowing it for sure. It’s certainly a bad attitude.

Another thing worth mentioning is that even Dooble (or simplebrowser) is not 100% stable at the moment. There is a number of known bugs in our port of Chromium that need addressing to make it more stable. There is also a number of technical limitations (like 32 bits) that affect stability and are way more difficult to overcome than fixing bugs. Even if we had a single full time developer assigned to all these tasks, it would not go fast because of the complexity and volume of the code (remember, the original teams working on these projects consist of dozens of skilled developers). But we don’t have even a single one right now. So please don’t expect any outstanding progress in this area. So is the current state of affairs. In my understanding, It’s already a miracle that we got to the point where we are now (having a working Chromium port for OS/2 together with Qt 5).

Porting Qt 6 (as well as fixing Qt/Chromium bugs) is not a problem per se — we have all the tools and all the experience needed for that. What we don’t have (or have not enough) is human resources and money. The best an individual can do here is to either donate what he can, or help with testing and bug reporting, or even help with coding (we accept patches and pull requests since day 1).

I should have more time for OS/2 in the next few days which means that there might be a Dooble RPM for wider testing.

Peace to everyone, I stand for Ukraine.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 17, 2022, 02:18:30 am
Hi Dmitry,

Glad to hear you made it  out of Russia and that you're safe.

I appreciate your post  and update. My comment about 'doesn't smell right' was specifically in relation to Roderick's last update, where he implies that 'others' were behind the switch to Dooble -  you now seems to have confirmed that you/bww chose  to switch to Dooble.  I'm not sure why Roderick was so unclear. Or perhapsI misread and the development is done by bww and the rpm  by  volunteers?

In relation to "updates having «little to do with the browser»."  I'm clearly not talking about toolchain updates - there have been plenty of non-toolchain updates in recent bww updates (libusb, libuvc as examples  from the most recent bww update).

The fundamental issue is the lack of transparency.  Why not be clear  where things stand? If you read Roderick's post, the browser has been coming in a few weeks for what seems like years  now.  Your post actually sets out some of the technical limitations blocking progress.

Cheers,

Paul
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on April 17, 2022, 03:04:21 am
Paul, Dmitriy, everyone...

Glad to hear you made it out of Russia and that you're safe....

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this...glad to hear you are OK, things may be a little rough today (believe me, this comes from someone that was a refugee for about 2 yrs. of his life, albeit in a different non-war type of a settings), but with time stability will come as well!

...The fundamental issue is the lack of transparency.  Why not be clear  where things stand? If you read Roderick's post, the browser has been coming in a few weeks for what seems like years  now.  Your post actually sets out some of the technical limitations blocking progress...

Paul hit the proverbial nail on the head with the above statement. The status reporting, the communications, etc. always feel like it's nearly a 3rd or 4th hand message (forget even the regular "2nd hand" moniker). So at least from my perspective, having previously had the pleasure of participating in the Firefox Testing List where I got the chance to see the activities first-hand, there appears to be a giant gap in what's actually taking place "on the ground" and where the plans being communicated suggest things should be.

Dmitriy,
Your post here is, as best as I can tell, the only concise and clear Status Update on where the browser project is today and what the real challenges are.

At this point in time you have far too important matters to take care of than things such as OS/2 projects, especially given the lack of funding that would facilitate your continued employment.

Take care of yourself and don't hesitate to reach out if things get bad!
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Roderick Klein on April 17, 2022, 09:12:21 am
Hey Roderick,

I did send out a news message via OS/2 VOICE why the browser was delayed. Its because of the events surrounding Ukraine. Dmitry has not been able to work on the browser for close to 6 weeks.

With the greatest  of respect  - if this latest  delay was the first that had been seen,  I don't think anyone would be complaining.

Remember that in November *2020* we heard  that builds were in the hands of beta testers -  yet almost 18 months later there seems to have been little progress beyond this; let alone the original roadmap from April *2018* (4 years ago) that documented an 18 month road  map.

Cheers,

Paul

Well I provide the newsletter updates on https://articles.os2voice.org where Dmitry and I explained why the project was delayed.
All the newsletters where written by me and reviewed by Dmitry.  With the help of Martin these updates where also refered to on the main page os2world.com.

Roderick
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Roderick Klein on April 17, 2022, 09:28:47 am
Hi Dmitry,

Glad to hear you made it  out of Russia and that you're safe.

I appreciate your post  and update. My comment about 'doesn't smell right' was specifically in relation to Roderick's last update, where he implies that 'others' were behind the switch to Dooble -  you now seems to have confirmed that you/bww chose  to switch to Dooble.  I'm not sure why Roderick was so unclear. Or perhapsI misread and the development is done by bww and the rpm  by  volunteers?

In relation to "updates having «little to do with the browser»."  I'm clearly not talking about toolchain updates - there have been plenty of non-toolchain updates in recent bww updates (libusb, libuvc as examples  from the most recent bww update).

The fundamental issue is the lack of transparency.  Why not be clear  where things stand? If you read Roderick's post, the browser has been coming in a few weeks for what seems like years  now.  Your post actually sets out some of the technical limitations blocking progress.

Cheers,

Paul

A lot of the reasons for the delay and some of these technicall blocking limitations where described in the browser updates on https://articles.os2voice.org did you read these over time ?

The Dooble browser was compiled by Elbert Pol orginally. After Dmitry had to get out of Russia I talked to Dmitry via Telegram app to consider doing a RPM file for the Dooble Browser. Gregg Young started working on the RPM package. The text of the last posting I send out was not clear., but the Dooble RPM was discussed with Dmitry. At the time the message was send out it was unclear WHEN Dmitry would be able to do ANY work on Otter or OS/2 even...

He is currently (as time permits) working on the Dooble RPM package. As everbody now understands he a lot of stuff to deal with after he left Russia.

Roderick

Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dmitriy Kuminov on April 17, 2022, 01:08:55 pm
Hey Paul,

Glad to hear you made it  out of Russia and that you're safe.

Thanks.

Quote
I appreciate your post  and update. My comment about 'doesn't smell right' was specifically in relation to Roderick's last update, where he implies that 'others' were behind the switch to Dooble -  you now seems to have confirmed that you/bww chose  to switch to Dooble.  I'm not sure why Roderick was so unclear. Or perhapsI misread and the development is done by bww and the rpm  by  volunteers?

You mix things here. Dooble itself builds out of the box with Qt 5.12 and its Qt WebEngine on OS/2 and so far it has no OS/2 specific patches except adding `-lssp` (because LIBC doesn't do that on it's own when `-fstack-protector` is given). Anyone can easily build it. Elbert Pol discovered Dooble a while ago and we were considering it as a backup while still targeting Otter. Then we just came to a conclusion to release Doodle instead because it performed better. It was a collective decision (OS/2 Voice + bww). Then Gregg Young volunteered to create a Dooble RPM with the help of Elbert Pol while I was not able to work. This is what Roderick meant by 'others' I guess. Then I eventually found time to take it over in order to provide the usual bww quality in terms of release cycles and such.

Please keep in mind that Dooble (as well as Otter) is essentially a frontend to QtWebEngine (Chromium) with little to no platform-specific code. There are some things that may need attention to make them properly work on OS/2 but these are minor (like spell checking, bookmark importing, desktop integration and so on). The core web rendering functionality belongs to QtWebEngine (i.e. the part I/bww was hardly working on through the last years) and has nothing to do with either Dooble or Otter. My guess is that Otter has more stability problems because it makes a more extensive use of various Chromium APIs to implement its rich features like ad blocking while Dooble is much more light weight.

Quote
In relation to "updates having «little to do with the browser»."  I'm clearly not talking about toolchain updates - there have been plenty of non-toolchain updates in recent bww updates (libusb, libuvc as examples  from the most recent bww update).

As I mentioned - these are mostly simple version bumps and they are mostly done by Silvan (who works for bww for free since the last couple of years, I must remind you). I.e. no Qt/browser campaign money is spent there. Although there are some important things like Python 3 also done by Silvan (with some of my help) and these should not come for free because they are needed for Qt/browser/toolchains as well (again, Silvan doesn't charge for that now but this is not right and should be changed).

Quote
The fundamental issue is the lack of transparency.  Why not be clear  where things stand? If you read Roderick's post, the browser has been coming in a few weeks for what seems like years  now.  Your post actually sets out some of the technical limitations blocking progress.

I understand your concern here but providing detailed status reports is also a job that requires human power and time. As we are on a low budget we don't always have enough resources for that. And OS/2 Voice basically volunteers here too. And this was like that before the war, now it's more complicated until settled at least. But we will keep trying to do our best to keep the community informed. Thanks for understanding.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dmitriy Kuminov on April 17, 2022, 01:31:34 pm
Dariusz,

Glad to hear you made it out of Russia and that you're safe...

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this...glad to hear you are OK, things may be a little rough today (believe me, this comes from someone that was a refugee for about 2 yrs. of his life, albeit in a different non-war type of a settings), but with time stability will come as well!

Thank you. Yes, I'm kind of a refugee right now. However, my life situation is still ways better than it is for many Ukrainians. Everyone who can (including me) should definitely show their support to them.

As for the rest, please read my reply to Paul.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dmitriy Kuminov on April 17, 2022, 02:29:23 pm
Athough it seems that the Qt Company recently (march 2022) released an opensource version of Qt 5.15.3 :

https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042262.html (https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042262.html)

(that is more than one year since releasing version 5.15.2, that dmik ported to OS/2)

That's actually a good news which I overlooked being smashed by the crimes of my country. It should be relatively easy to update the OS/2 port of Qt 5.15.2 to it (which will also update Chromium from version 83.* to 87.* with some patches from 88.* according to the readme — with the top version from Google being 103.*). When it will happen exactly - I don't know. Reasons are above.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Eugene Tucker on April 17, 2022, 02:51:26 pm
I would not sweat dropping Otter for Dobble. As I have been following Otters development and it seems to have issues even in the Windows and Linux platforms. And Dimity I salute your courage.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Tom on April 17, 2022, 04:51:15 pm
Athough it seems that the Qt Company recently (march 2022) released an opensource version of Qt 5.15.3 :

https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042262.html (https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042262.html)


That's actually a good news which I overlooked being smashed by the crimes of my country. It should be relatively easy to update the OS/2 port of Qt 5.15.2 to it (which will also update Chromium from version 83.* to 87.* with some patches from 88.* according to the readme — with the top version from Google being 103.*). When it will happen exactly - I don't know. Reasons are above.

While it would be nice, nobody may expect it to be done any time soon - you have more important things going on about your personal situation.
I am happy to read that you are at least safe, though of course that is only one aspect of your current everyday life. I wish you all the best with your situation and wellbeing!
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Lars on April 17, 2022, 05:13:58 pm
About updates to libusb and libuvc:
they were done by me exclusively (with Wim doing a lot of testing, also for free) and they have been done entirely for free. No money was spent on this. I also updated IJFW ( the FXWRAP.SYS driver to more specific) entirely for free. Silvan suggested that we might need libuvc and libusb to support USB webcams in the browser.

I thought about contacting Dmitry to ask him if he would leave Russia but I thought that might be a not safe thing to do. Well, he made his decision and I am glad that he is safe.

Cheers,
Lars
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dave Yeo on April 17, 2022, 07:18:15 pm
Hi Dmitriy, glad to hear that you're doing realtively well in these weird times though pretty crappy having to leave home and not really having status in other countries.
I worded things badly as what I meant was work in progress repositrories or unpushed stuff as it wasn't quite finished.
It seems it was all based on my error of using qmake instead of qmake-qt5 for building, my inexperience with QT5.
As for Dooble, it does almost build out of the box, we seem to be missing mlock/munlock in mmap.h. Posting this from Dooble and can play around with it now.
Thanks for your and the rest of Bitwise's work.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dmitriy Kuminov on April 21, 2022, 01:55:57 pm
Thanks for your support guys. Yes, I was not right about libvusb and libuvc, it's Lars' work, not Silvan's indeed, sorry Lars.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Lars on April 21, 2022, 04:08:52 pm
Thanks for your support guys. Yes, I was not right about libvusb and libuvc, it's Lars' work, not Silvan's indeed, sorry Lars.

No worries. Just wanted to make clear that NO money was spent on something nobody has explicitely paid for.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Roderick Klein on April 25, 2022, 12:20:25 am
The Dooble RPM file has been released. This is preview. It in rpm.netlabs.org when I write this and it will be moved from th EXP repo to the normal user repo Stable repo. This is what is normally active in ANPM (Arca Noae Package Manager).

Readme is attached for some more information.

Roderick
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Doug Bissett on April 25, 2022, 06:35:55 am
Quote
The Dooble RPM file has been released. This is preview. It in rpm.netlabs.org when I write this and it will be moved from th EXP repo to the normal user repo Stable repo. This is what is normally active in ANPM (Arca Noae Package Manager).

Well, that is certainly not ready to be put in the release repo. I can't even read Help-> Documentation, or Help-> Release notes. The pictures seem fine, but the text consists of a line, or blank. I tried on more than one system, with the same results.

Some complex web sites seem to work well (nasa.gov for example). Important web sites, like OS2WORLD.COM have some text, but most of it is just a line, or blank. HOBBES is just lines, where text should be.

Something seems to be missing.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Paul Smedley on April 25, 2022, 07:28:16 am
Help -> Release Notes & Help -> Documentation both work for me with my build of Dooble <shrug>
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dave Yeo on April 25, 2022, 07:30:48 am
Same with my build, though sometimes have to reload the page for it to appear.
Really important to mark everything to load high.
Edit: Ok downloaded the official build, works as well as Paul's and my builds. Something is wrong with your setup I guess. I am using a netlabs-exp install.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Lars on April 25, 2022, 07:53:24 am
Dooble as downloaded from Netlabs Exp works for me.
But I am still using eCS.
Maybe I also have some missing prerequisite component already installed, who knows.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Dmitriy Kuminov on April 25, 2022, 12:19:31 pm
Well, that is certainly not ready to be put in the release repo. I can't even read Help-> Documentation, or Help-> Release notes. The pictures seem fine, but the text consists of a line, or blank. I tried on more than one system, with the same results.

This has nothing to do with Dooble or Chromium or Qt. It's the fontconfig (mis)configuration. The Ghostscript libraries (used by CUPS if you have it installed) install some really outdated legacy PostScript fonts like Nimbus which are not Unicode aware. This broken Nimbus is then used as a default (!) font in the system (because of some fontconfig magic). But even if you would get rid of it, you still have outdated non-Unicode Type1 Times New Roman font supplied by OS/2 since ages which gets selected as a default for the "serif" family by fontconfig. And since Chromium/Qt/Google requests "serif" as the standard font for web content by default, Times New Roman gets selected and this makes many pages (including Dooble Documentation) lack any text. Note that if you remove this Times New Roman (TNR.PFB) and friends from /PSFONTS, the mentioned Nimbus will be selected for "serif" with the same effect — lack of Unicode support.

A proper solution is to fine-tune fontconfig for OS/2 so that it ignores Type1 in favour of modern TTF (e.g. ArcaOS comes with the nice Droid family IIRC which works just fine with Dooble). But this isn't an easy task, it needs time to sort things out. As a time being, there are two possible workarounds:

1. Install a well-known font family that has a higher priority in fontconfig (the DejaVu family works great here). This is a preferred solution as it will fix not only Dooble but any Qt/Chromium application.
2. Go to Dooble Settings, Web page, Fonts group, and replace all Nimbus/Times New Roman entries with Droid or any other font that works with Unicode (i.e. not standard OS/2 Type1 fonts).

Perhaps worth mentioning in the Readme.

PS. You can easily check which font Qt will use for a given family request by doing `fc-match FAMILY` on the command line. You may need to run `fc-cache -f` to rescan your fonts after you toss them around.

PPS. Here's the fontconfig ticket, for future reference https://github.com/bitwiseworks/fontconfig-os2/issues/1
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Doug Bissett on April 25, 2022, 06:03:57 pm
Quote
This has nothing to do with Dooble or Chromium or Qt. It's the fontconfig (mis)configuration. The Ghostscript libraries (used by CUPS if you have it installed) install some really outdated legacy PostScript fonts like Nimbus which are not Unicode aware. This broken Nimbus is then used as a default (!) font in the system (because of some fontconfig magic). But even if you would get rid of it, you still have outdated non-Unicode Type1 Times New Roman font supplied by OS/2 since ages which gets selected as a default for the "serif" family by fontconfig. And since Chromium/Qt/Google requests "serif" as the standard font for web content by default, Times New Roman gets selected and this makes many pages (including Dooble Documentation) lack any text. Note that if you remove this Times New Roman (TNR.PFB) and friends from /PSFONTS, the mentioned Nimbus will be selected for "serif" with the same effect — lack of Unicode support.

This seems to describe it. Note, that I am using a test version of ArcaOS 5.1, so it would seem that some adjustments need to be made, before 5.1 is released.

Quote
A proper solution is to fine-tune fontconfig for OS/2 so that it ignores Type1 in favour of modern TTF (e.g. ArcaOS comes with the nice Droid family IIRC which works just fine with Dooble). But this isn't an easy task, it needs time to sort things out

That makes sense, but I have never played around with that stuff, and I have no idea what needs to be done. Can somebody expand on that, please.

Quote
Perhaps worth mentioning in the Readme.

I would consider that to be an essential part of the Readme.

Quote
PS. You can easily check which font Qt will use for a given family request by doing `fc-match FAMILY` on the command line.

Result:
[C:\DESKTOP]fc-match FAMILY
n019003l.pfb: "Nimbus Sans L" "Regular"

I will see if I can figure out the "workarounds".

THANKS...

Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Doug Bissett on April 25, 2022, 06:32:39 pm
Quote
2. Go to Dooble Settings, Web page, Fonts group, and replace all Nimbus/Times New Roman entries with Droid or any other font that works with Unicode (i.e. not standard OS/2 Type1 fonts).

Okay, I was able to replace the "bad" fonts with DROID fonts (already installed in ArcaOS). Now, it seems to be working properly.

Thanks.
Title: Re: New Browser Delay Discussion
Post by: Wayne A. Smith on May 02, 2022, 07:58:25 pm


I was virtually paralysed when Russia invaded Ukraine and started a war by the end of February. I couldn’t do anything besides thinking on how catastrophic this is for everyone. When I caught my breath I realised that I can’t stand it any longer and need to leave Russia ASAP. It’s not only that it became impossible to do business due to all the sanctions. It’s mostly because I couldn’t tolerate what’s going on. I couldn’t be part of the country that turned into 1930’s Germany (even though I was born there and spent there all my entire life except one year). The least I could do is leave. So I was completely occupied with organising an immediate relocation (with the help of my friends, including some OS/2 folks, as well as some guys from the independent news outlet I also work for).

As I was getting closer to the leave, I got some confidence back and made myself work on the browser a bit between solving numerous move out problems. I don’t understand why this became a subject to criticism as if it were better if hadn’t done this. A few days ago I finally left Russia and plan to stay in Turkey for a while. Currently I’m a person with no home and no residence permit anywhere but Russia (where I’m not going to get back) — and this exposes a huge number of every day problems, starting from inability to have a bank account (and therefore bank cards) to prohibition to stay in a country for more than three months in a row (so I need to move between countries until I get a permit). So until this is solved somehow, my life situation remains volatile and my resources are very limited (in addition to limitations that were already there before the war).



What are your residence plans, Dmitriy?

While here in the USA immigration is a "hot issue", it appears that refugees from Ukraine, Russia (and, with limitations, Afghanistan) are favored.  I haven't practiced Immigration Law for decades, but I could look into it if interested.  Just a thought.