# Replace Ruby/GtkMozEmbed with gtkwebkit

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-ruby-gtkmozembed-with-gtkwebkit/151472>\
**Category:** Ruby-Gnome 2\
**Created:** [October 21, 2008, 10:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-ruby-gtkmozembed-with-gtkwebkit/151472 "2008-10-21T22:55:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philipp_GSSSStzinge)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 10:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-ruby-gtkmozembed-with-gtkwebkit/151472/1 "2008-10-21T22:55:46Z")

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Hello,  
in the past i had always segment faults with mozembed and couldnt fix  
it.  
then i switched to webkit and in my case it worked better

[http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/](http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/)

i think mozembed is dead and everyone had problems.

are there any plans to replace mozembed it with webkit e.g (  
[http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/](http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/)) ?

thanks  
regards  
Philipp

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**Author:** ![Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philipp_GSSSStzinge)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 4:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-ruby-gtkmozembed-with-gtkwebkit/151472/2 "2008-10-23T16:01:16Z")

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Hi,

In [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
“[ruby-gnome2-devel-en] replace Ruby/GtkMozEmbed with gtkwebkit” on  
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:55:03 +0200,  
“Philipp\_Götzinger” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Hello,  
> in the past i had always segment faults with mozembed and couldnt fix it.  
> then i switched to webkit and in my case it worked better
> 
> [http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/](http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/)
> 
> i think mozembed is dead and everyone had problems.
> 
> are there any plans to replace mozembed it with webkit e.g (http://  
> [www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/](http://www.daniellucraft.com/blog/2008/04/ruby-webkit-2/)) ?

Does this mean that WebKit bindings should provide  
GtkMozEmbed bindings compatible API?

Anyway, we can’t add a new package into Ruby-GNOME2 project  
without maintainer.

## Thanks,

kou

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**Author:** ![Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philipp_GSSSStzinge)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 4:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-ruby-gtkmozembed-with-gtkwebkit/151472/3 "2008-10-23T16:47:06Z")

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I don’t believe this to be the case, or desirable.

> Anyway, we can’t add a new package into Ruby-GNOME2 project  
> without maintainer.

I am happy to be the maintainer, although I’m not sure that the  
WebkitGtk bindings to Webkit have themselves stabilized enough yet to  
be relied upon yet. Andrew Townley has been doing some work on them  
more recently than I have, so perhaps he can help us decide that with  
more up-to-date information.

best,  
Dan

* * *

Daniel L.  
[http://www.daniellucraft.com/](http://www.daniellucraft.com/)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philipp_GSSSStzinge)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 4:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-ruby-gtkmozembed-with-gtkwebkit/151472/4 "2008-10-23T16:47:41Z")

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2008/10/23 Daniel L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid):

> I don’t believe this to be the case, or desirable.

Sorry, this was referring to API compatibility between GtkMozEmbed and  
WebkitGtk. That got lost when my first attempt to post was rejected!

best,  
Dan

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@Philipp\_GSSSStzinge](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Philipp_GSSSStzinge)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 7:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/replace-ruby-gtkmozembed-with-gtkwebkit/151472/5 "2008-10-25T07:17:20Z")

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On Thu, 2008-10-23 at 15:10 +0100, Daniel L. wrote:

> > Does this mean that WebKit bindings should provide  
> > GtkMozEmbed bindings compatible API?
> 
> I don’t believe this to be the case, or desirable.

I’ve now used all of GtkHTML2, my embryonic bindings for GtkHTML3,  
Ruby/MozEmbed and have been working on filling out the rest of the  
capabilities in the Ruby/WebKit stuff that Dan started.

I was out most of the week, so I haven’t had a chance to do a lot with  
the WebKit changes I made yet. I’m hoping to be able to do some work on  
this over the weekend and let Dan see what I’ve done. There’s still  
some tidying to do…

The WebKit bindings reflect the WebKit/GTK API. This API has been  
influenced by the MozEmbed, GtkHTML and other projects, but it isn’t  
exactly the same. In many ways, you can’t do interesting things with  
MozEmbed until you get ahold of the XPCOM interface for the core  
browser.

One of the advantages of WebKit over MozEmbed is that they’re making an  
effort to expose more of this core functionality through a native GTK  
API so that it is easier to embed and extend in GTK applications. While  
it is mostly trivial to provide a basic adapter from WebKit to the  
MozEmbed API, I don’t think that this belongs as part of the library.

Currently, I have a working BrowserView API that essentially allows me  
to encapsulate embedding most of the 4 APIs mentioned above in a  
transparent way to the rest of my application. While I think that  
something like this has its uses, it solves a separate problem.

> > Anyway, we can’t add a new package into Ruby-GNOME2 project  
> > without maintainer.
> 
> I am happy to be the maintainer, although I’m not sure that the  
> WebkitGtk bindings to Webkit have themselves stabilized enough yet to  
> be relied upon yet. Andrew Townley has been doing some work on them  
> more recently than I have, so perhaps he can help us decide that with  
> more up-to-date information.

One of the things I haven’t had a chance to do is put the conditional  
compilation flags in to allow Ruby/WebKit to support various  
distributions’ packages of WebKit. The work I’m doing is based on  
SVN/trunk, but that requires compiling all of WebKit from source. It is  
far from complicated to do, but it does take some horsepower and time.

My impression is that unless you’re just doing basic loading of web  
pages, there are some parts of the API that are missing. I’ve raised  
these issues on the webkit-dev mailing list, and there are some open  
bugs around some of this functionality. Various of the other ports have  
implemented these things in slightly different ways, so it is hard to  
say what direction WebKit/GTK will go.

If I have the time, I might try to fill in a couple of these gaps that I  
need, but I’m quickly using up the time I’ve allocated to getting a  
working application done. I still don’t have the application  
functionality I need to have because I’ve been working on bringing in  
the underlying library capabilities into Ruby.

I personally don’t think that Ruby/WebKit should be part of the  
mainstream Ruby-GNOME2 distribution until the WebKit/GTK release has  
stabilized. I’ve discussed with Dan how to integrate the changes to  
track the functionality I need, but I think the right thing to do at the  
moment is for Dan and myself to just maintain it separately. Once the  
WebKit/GTK API is finished/stabilized, then I think it makes more sense  
to bundle in with part of the Ruby-GNOME2 distribution.

One of the other things that I’m doing is trying to make what’s there  
more closely follow the implementation approaches of the rest of the  
library. It isn’t far off, but that’s one of the things I hope to do  
this weekend.

Cheers,

## ast

Andrew S. Townley [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
[http://atownley.org](http://atownley.org)
