[native-client-discuss] Just a couple question of ultimate goals

[Weston Weems]

I've read that its likely to target llvm for platform independence,
but is the ultimate goal to have this working in other browsers (or is
this already the case)?

Also, when can we expect to see this turned on and enabled by default
in a build of chromium or chrome? Its nice to tinker with currently,
but if we're looking at over a year before I can deliver this to my
clients, I may be better off focusing my efforts on other
technologies.

Aside from all my concerns, I appreciate what you guys are doing...
these are the bits that the HTML5 fanboys dont realize is missing from
a pure html5 web-app world. My opinion is that JS is a pos, and what
you are able to hack together usually is not optimal. Being able to
have js handle the bare minimum and go and fire off native code is
ideal.

Thanks again

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[Cliff L. Biffle]

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 8:29 AM, Weston Weems <wwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've read that its likely to target llvm for platform independence,
> but is the ultimate goal to have this working in other browsers (or is
> this already the case)?

In general, we'd love to be on as many platform/browser combinations
as possible! A subset of our current functionality works in Firefox,
for example (though it's currently missing some important parts, like
3D). Because our team is finite, we can't be everywhere at once --
but we'd love any help from outside contributors on this front.

> Also, when can we expect to see this turned on and enabled by default
> in a build of chromium or chrome?

The current goal is "rather soon." :-)

> Aside from all my concerns, I appreciate what you guys are doing...

Thanks! Keep in mind that many of us are also HTML5 fanboys. :-) As
a cross-platform, cross-device presentation and rendering model, HTML
is hard to beat! We want to make sure it's as easy as possible to
interact with HTML-based UIs from native code.

As for JavaScript, while we do want to provide alternatives to the
language, it's not *all* bad. If you're interested I'd suggest the
book "JavaScript: The Good Parts," by Douglas Crockford. (Amusingly,
it's not very long.)

--
Cliff L. Biffle
NaCl Team, Google, Inc.

[Ariel Manzur]

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Cliff L. Biffle <cbi...@google.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 8:29 AM, Weston Weems <wwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've read that its likely to target llvm for platform independence,
>> but is the ultimate goal to have this working in other browsers (or is
>> this already the case)?
>
> In general, we'd love to be on as many platform/browser combinations
> as possible!  A subset of our current functionality works in Firefox,
> for example (though it's currently missing some important parts, like
> 3D).  Because our team is finite, we can't be everywhere at once --
> but we'd love any help from outside contributors on this front.

what's necessary to get it working on IE? the browser needs to be
modified? would it be possible to put 3D on the plugin, and use that
when the browser doesn't provide it? (it won't integrate with the
browser rendering and all that stuff that Pepper does, but on a lot of
cases just having a HWND with a gl context to draw is enough)

[Cliff L. Biffle]

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Ariel Manzur <pun...@gmail.com> wrote:
> what's necessary to get it working on IE? the browser needs to be
> modified?

IE support would be great too.

I'm no Windows expert, but the main obstacle is that (as I understand
it) IE doesn't implement NPAPI. While we can limp along without
Pepper, NPAPI is kind of important for things like interacting with
the DOM.

I believe we had an ActiveX bridge at some point, which may or may not
still work. Someone could probably implement Pepper functionality
through there. It doesn't seem like an unsolvable problem by any
means!

--
Cliff L. Biffle
NaCl Team, Google, Inc.