[Kde-bindings] KjsEmbed - what is now and what will be?

[Ian Monroe]

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Andreas Marschke
<xxtjaxx at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Am Sonntag 28 Februar 2010 00:01:21 schrieb Ian Monroe:
>> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 4:34 PM, Andreas Marschke
>>
>> <xxtjaxx at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi everyone!
>> >
>> > I had been trying to work with kross in the last few weeks to get kross
>> > working with an  application I'm working on (Bangarang) and in that
>> > context worked and tested it with Javascript(aka. KjsEmbed / Kjs).
>> > The problem was that it mostly crashed even though I tried to implement
>> > it as lean as possible.
>> > I asked before why Kjs/KjsEmbed/Kross was so crashy and not as accepted
>> > between other big projects in the KDE landscape as implementing pure
>> > QtScript(Amarok) and ignore most of the greatness and variety that
>> > bindings to Python and Ruby allow us to use.
>>
>> We (=Amarok) wanted to limit the dependency creep that sets in when
>> you depend on Ruby or Python (since they will inevitably depend on
>> other ruby and python libraries). Amarok 1.4 allowed scripts to be
>> written in any language and they became really difficult for users to
>> install.
>
> These troubles are recieved and understood by me and still wonder
> me since amarok (these days ) needs a special mysql to be compiled against and
> afaik mysql is approx. bigger than a python library that you need to drag in
> for the bindings.

But users have to figure out dependencies for scripts. Professionals
handle the dependencies for Amarok.

>> Also we weren't sure about embedding python and ruby, though in
>> retrospect probably going that route would've been better since their
>> Qt bindings were better developed (this issue will be fixed soon with
>> JSmoke though).
> JSmoke is therefore another attempt for Js on KDE?

No, its a smoke binding for QtScript. The Smoke library is how we
reveal KDE and Qt APIs to Ruby and C# etc and now JavaScript.

>> > As I had been told most of Kjs and KjsEmbed, where I dont even see where
>> >  the difference between the two is, seem to be completely or halfway
>> > unmaintained since the people who wrote it have other more important
>> > things to do which is absolutely legitimit and not intended to offend
>> > them.
>> > I would rather like to help.
>> >
>> > So can you guys give me pointers to where I should go and help out
>> > codewise to start fixing these issues?
>> >
>> > I would also appreciate a small walk through on where the ruogh edges are
>> > and where one can wave his hand to help.
>>
>> Isn't there a QtScript backend for Kross? I remember a talk at Akademy
>> 07 where a KJS dev compared KJS with QtScript and more or less said
>> that QtScript was a great looking technology. And now QtScript uses
>> JavascriptCore from Webkit, so its future seems well established
>> (though honestly a bit buggy at the moment due to the change).
> Yes there is a kross binding for QtScript and there is a binding for KJS which
> confused me in the first place since its kind of a duplicated effort.

KJS predates QtScript so it wasn't a duplicated effort at the time.

> A good question  coming to my mind is will we ditch KJS and build KDE bindings
> upon QtScript like you built KDE upon Qt or will we have kjs and keep it and
> try to fix it "at some point"?

Plasma is using QtScript as well, so yea I don't think KJS has much of a future.

Ian