Re: SVG widget in GNU Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2021 17:47:03 +0800
> 
> > Po, if you're seriously considering cleaning up this code, it might be
> > wise to take a step back and consider what features its trying to
> > provide and how. There's a fundamental tension between the
> > buffer/window model of emacs and the way gtk implements a MVC paradigm
> > that makes it nontrivial for them to be compatible. This situation has
> > only worsened as gtk has been moving its api's to better support a
> > future with heavy reliance on gpu rendering. IIRC this means the
> > offscreen rendering technique employed by xwidgets is being deprecated
> > in gtk. Furthermore xwidgets was implemented before webkit was
> > transitioned to a containerized worker process architecture so there's
> > bugs one has to work through as gtk attempts to take back control of
> > things like signal masks that emacs controls when it initializes gtk.
> > My impression has actually been that the nsxwidgets have worked far
> > better and reliably since that was merged (in fact I remember coming
> > across some emacs package out there that relied on xwidgets, but that
> > only supported it on macOS as something or another was broken with
> > xwidgets on gtk). I suspect the transition from x11 to wayland has
> > introduced a lot of bugs and difficulties for really complex gtk
> > widgets like webkitgtk.
> 
> I understand what the problem in this area is.  But I'd rather have the
> existing and (mostly) working xwidgets feature fixed than to waste time
> implementing a new one.

If the technology on which xwidgets are based is being deprecated, let
alone a dead end, that time will not go wasted.