Nokia Engineers on KHTML

Rich writes "KDE could soon be making its way into your mobile phone. At aKademy in August David Carson and Deepika Chauhan from Nokia presented the work they've done in integrating KDE components into the latest version of the company's mobile phone software. Philip Rodrigues discusses this work with them on dot.kde.org."

Comments

Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[antivoid]

With any luck, there will be some innovation taking place rather than just shoving KDE onto a cellphone. A few things make me wonder:

1. Is this an appropriate GUI system to be using in such memory-deficient devices? I believe we we find out soon...

2. What bothers me about an X system is that it is targetted at client-server, and the resultant code bloat may prove hazardous to an embedded implementation. I do however that an open-source-based solution should be used (why re-invent the wheel).

3. What sort of licensing and commercial rights do a company possess, given the fact that they are using open-source commercially?

4. Can I still make phone calls of this phone? :)

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[WillerZ]

FFS RTFA, this is about WebCore (a KHTML-derived HTML rendering engine) being used in the Nokia web browser. They aren't porting all of KDE.

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[maxwell demon]

4. Can I still make phone calls of this phone? :)

You'll make kphone kalls instead.

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[TheRaven64]

WebCore is not dependent on X. It uses a small Qt-like backend. On OS X, this translates drawing calls into Quatrz (PDF-like) drawing commands. On X11, they can be translated into X11 drawing calls. On a Series 60 phone they will be translated into the native GUI's API.

WebCore is LGPL. They have to make their changes available to people who buy their 'phones (they also have to allow their customers to use a different version of WebCore, which could be interesting). They do not have to contribute their changes directly back to Apple, but they probably will since it is usually much easier to contribute patches than maintain a fork (note that this didn't apply to Apple when they forked KHTML, since they were throwing more developer time at the codebase than KHTML had in total, so it was easier to fork).

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[molnarcs]

1. Is this an appropriate GUI system to be using in such memory-deficient devices? I believe we we find out soon...

Yes. If you think specifically of KDE/QT - check out what runs on zaurus, ipaq, and whatnot, but you have to remember that this is Qtopia, not the same thing you have as a kde desktop, although resourcewise, KDE is becoming lighter and lighter...

Also, they speak about a rendering engine, not a GUI/OS solution (and afaik Nokia did a browser using khtml but with GTK UI).

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[RossyB]

2. What bothers me about an X system is that it is targetted at client-server, and the resultant code bloat may prove hazardous to an embedded implementation. I do however that an open-source-based solution should be used (why re-invent the wheel).

Sigh, this again. In X when the client and the server are on the same machine, communication is by local Unix sockets, which are the fastest form of IPC on Linux. Keith Packard wrote a new X server (kdrive) to demonstrate that X doesn't have to be slow, and he was right: the "overhead" of the client/server communication is nothing compared to the time it takes smaller systems to draw.

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[Bogtha]

Is this an appropriate GUI system to be using in such memory-deficient devices?

RTFA:

We started investigating the available open-source solutions and decided to go with a KDE-based solution for primarily 3 reasons:

1. Series 60 devices are constrained by ROM/RAM. WebCore/KHTML and JavaScriptCore/KJS provide rendering engines that use very small RAM/ROM footprint. That was really a clincher for us.

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[rdieter]

WebCore is LGPL. They have to make their changes available to people who buy their 'phones

True.

(they also have to allow their customers to use a different version of WebCore, which could be interesting).

That's an interesting but (IMO) false interpretation of the LGPL.

Re:Cool... BUT (there's always a BUT)

[MenTaLguY]

1. in most cases drawing still dominates, rather than IPC overhead

2. This is why the standard MIT SHM extension exists. When the client and server are on the same machine, the bitmap memory can be shared between client and server

Re:KHTML?

[biehl]

Yes, WebCore is Apples fork of KHTML. Read here for an explanation on how the collaboration between the projects works.

Re:Warning

[mattjb0010]

Seriously, they need to stop naming everything K-something, it's so incredibly lame.

iAgree.

What of the 770?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't they already have their own GTK+ based gui and Webcore based browser? I seem to recall them releasing the sources some time ago.

Re:What of the 770?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did a port of KHTML, but never used it. The 770 runs a customized build of Opera.

Small RAM footprint

[Mostly a lurker]

Was anyone else surprised that the key reason for using KDE components was the small footprint of the rendering engine? I had not considered KDE terrible in this regard, but I am shocked that it is considered superior to the alternatives.

Re:Small RAM footprint

[Jessta]

it's not KDE. It's KHTML.
KHTML has a far lower footprint than something like GECKO(mozilla firefox).

Re:Small RAM footprint

[m50d]

Was anyone else surprised that the key reason for using KDE components was the small footprint of the rendering engine? I had not considered KDE terrible in this regard, but I am shocked that it is considered superior to the alternatives.

The kde javascript engine is incredibly slow (straight rendering is faster than anything OSS, but once you hit heavy javascript it slows to a crawl), so I'm glad there's something it's good at in compensation.

Another feature to run down the battery...

[verbnoun]

Back when I had my first phone, a Nokia 3210, it could go for almost a week without charging. Now, I have a phone with all the features it lasts little more than a day. Personally, if I want to use KHTML while I'm travelling around I'd rather take a laptop and have a phone that lasts a reasonable amount of time.

Re:Another feature to run down the battery...

[Chicane-UK]

What the hell phone do you have that goes flat after 1 day?!

I run a Microsoft / Orange SPV C500 and its loaded with features.. MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc - I use it heavily for SMS texting (250/month roughly) and make about 2 or 3 calls a week on average and it usually lasts me about 5 days between charging. Its small too!

Re:Another feature to run down the battery...

[10Ghz]

I have Nokia 9300 Communicator. It has a GPRS-connection on all the time, so new emails are pushed to it instantly. I also make several phone-calls every day and use the PDA-functionality extensively. And the battery lasts for several days before needing a recharge.

So I call bullshit on your comment.

Re:KHTML?

[EntropyEngine]

As I understand it -- and have read elsewhere -- Nokia became interested through Apple's interest in kHTML.

After all, Apple have had some success with Quicktime on mobile devices and Nokia like that kind of stuff.

There's been all kinds of talk of Apple and Nokia gettin' all cozy on some smart phone stuff, but nothing has been confirmed, yet...

Re:Warning

[imsabbel]

iDont.

Seriously. When new to linux, and browsing through the huge garbage pile that is the "available list" of the package manager, finding something with the destinctinve "K" is really helpful, because they usually work and at least partly follow the same usability conventions.

Case in point: i couldnt even EXIT that damn vi before reading 5 minutes into the damn man file without kill-9ing the PID, but luckily a "Kedit" in the corresponding cathegory was available, completely usable

Re:Why do all this free work for ONE company?

[Bogtha]

The way the Qt/KDE relationship is structured, all this work porting KDE components to Troll Tech's platforms adds value primarily to the product from one company: Troll Tech.

Um, what? Porting KDE components to TrollTech's platforms? KDE has always been based on TrollTech's Qt toolkit.

Furthermore, it clearly adds value to KDE; the quality of the Qt toolkit really shows. Compare the quality of KHTML and Gecko sometime. KHTML's faster, uses less resources, and implements the W3C specifications better (it passes the Acid2 test, implements things like DOM2 mutation events, etc, some of which are a *long* way off in Gecko - Acid2 fixes aren't even planned yet). And yet the KHTML developers have accomplished this with a fraction of the resources available to Mozilla.org. Much the same comparisons can be made between KOffice and OpenOffice.

Assume Troll Tech's products are as good as people working with them say they are and that they should take over the world. What would we end up with? A single company monopolizing the commercial GUI development space, plus lots of people contributing free labor. How is that different from what we get with Microsoft?

The difference is that Qt is GPLed, so all the proprietary license fees would be paying for development of Free Software, and would directly benefit Free Software like KDE.

As far as I'm concerned, dual licenses are bad because they inhibit competition.

You can fork Qt whenever you want.

All contributors to an open source project should work on equal footing.

All contributors to Qt have all the freedoms granted by the GPL.

Re: KHTML

[g2devi]

There are two ports, one from Apple and one based off the work from Apple by Nokia. Here's the link I think you're referring to:
            http://gtk-webcore.sourceforge.net/

From the page: "Gtk+ WebCore is a Linux/Gtk+ port of Apple Computer Inc.'s WebCore KHTML html rendering engine including a web component. A reference browser implementation is included in the project. Gtk+ WebCore is a standards compliant (X)HTML rendering engine, javascript interpreter and an embeddable web component. The purpose of the web component is to be a light-weight, easy-to-compile and embed, open source rendering component.

The project work is done at Nokia Research Center (NRC) as part of ongoing internet browser-related research activities. By releasing the source we hope to support in open source communities interested in using KHTML rendering engine component."

Re:KHTML?

[fdobbie]

Since that was written, the world has moved on. Apple launched the WebKit open-source project as part of OpenDarwin. This means that WebKit bugs are now being tracked in bugzilla (in addition to Apple's internal bug tracking system), and WebKit, WebCore and JavaScriptCore have moved to a publicly accessible CVS server.

Re:Why do all this free work for ONE company?

[49152]

Oh no, not again!

This horse has been beaten to death several times before, either you are trolling or simply very ignorant.

QT is GPL'd you are free to fork at any time, if you dont believe me go read the f***ng license yourself.

Re:Why do all this free work for ONE company?

[10Ghz]

I don't get it. I really don't. A company releases their prodcut (a very good product in fact!) under the GPL. And when they do that, some people start to whine that "Don't do that! You are hurting the free software movement!". So releasing software as free sofware is a bad thing?

What is the problem here? TrollTech offers their product under the GPL. They also offer it under a proprietary license. They don't force anyone to use their toolkit, and you are free to fork the toolkit anytime you want to. So what is the problem here? Why is it bad to offer software under the GPL?

Assume Troll Tech's products are as good as people working with them say they are and that they should take over the world. What would we end up with? A single company monopolizing the commercial GUI development space, plus lots of people contributing free labor.

Qt is licensed under the GPL. I really fail to see how they could "monopolize" anything. or are you worried what would happen if Linux "monopolized" the OS-market? or if Red Hat "monopolized" Linux-market? Since the product (Qt, Linux or Red Hat) are GPL'ed, there will be no "monopolization" in the sense as would happen with Microsoft for example.

But people who do contribute free labor to Troll Tech should reflect on what they are doing and why they are doing it.

So I shouldn't offer any bug-reports to the kernel-folks, because that might make the product a bit better, and some company might earn some money through it?

Seriously, am I in the Twilight Zone or something? People are complaining when some company offerws kick-ass software under the GPL?