[dot] WebKit Ported to Qt 4

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1152645965/

From: George Staikos <staikos at kde.org>
Dept: deja-viewer
Date: Tuesday 11/Jul/2006, @12:26

WebKit Ported to Qt 4
=====================

   Today the KDE team announces a new project to re-synchronize our HTML
engine, KHTML [http://www.khtml.info], with the WebKit
[http://webkit.opendarwin.org/] engine.  Code named Unity, the project
has so far focused on porting the WebKit engine to Qt 4 with minimal
changes to the existing code-base.  WebKit is a derivative of the KHTML
engine developed by Apple Computer Inc.
  Unity-Demo showing the KDE Website
[http://static.kdenews.org/jr/unity-kde.png]
     The initial work for this project was done by four KDE core
developers at the KDE Four Core meeting [http://dot.kde.org/1151271635/]
last week in Trysil, Norway.  The contributors were Dirk Mueller, Zack
Rusin, Simon Hausmann, and George Staikos.  The project also builds on
lead-up work done over the past year by George Staikos and Maksim
Orlovich, which synchronized the KDE and WebKit Javascript engines.

     At this stage Unity is a research project to determine the
feasibility of merging much of the KHTML work done over the past few
years into WebKit.  This will provide us a means to synchronizing our
engines.  There are no concrete plans to replace KDE's current KHTML
component, which is also used by Konqueror [http://konqueror.kde.org] to
render HTML pages, with Unity.  Any such decision will be left to the
KHTML and KDE core development teams in the upcoming months. It is
dependent on many factors such as our ability to keep the engines
synchronized over time, our ability to produce a high-performance,
stable, and complete KPart, our level of comfort with the new code-base,
and our ability to come to a suitable working arrangement with the other
WebKit contributors.
 Unity-Demo rendering Google
[http://static.kdenews.org/jr/unity-google.png]
     With respect to the technical work, our efforts have resulted in a
Qt 4 based WebKit library that is able to render a variety of web pages
quite nicely. There is still a considerable amount of work to do before
it can be considered a complete browser engine on our platform but the
basic foundations are complete.  The KDE build system, cmake, is
integrated into the WebKit sources, rendering uses Qt's graphics
facilities, and a simple test driver has been developed.  A KDE layer
will be added to integrate the engine with the desktop facilities
provided by KDE as well as creating a KPart which can be loaded by any
KDE application requesting a handler for HTML.

     Anyone wishing to join the effort should contact the developers on
the kfm-devel mailing list
[https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kfm-devel].  Source code is
accessible in KDE's Subversion repository.
 [http://websvn.kde.org/branches/work/unity/] For press queries about
this and other KDE announcements see the KDE press contacts
[http://www.kde.org/contact/representatives.php] page.