Odyssey 1.23 progress: r5 RC2

@Elwood
C might not be very good, but it is ubiquitous. They are switching to Rust, because programs written in the functional paradigm are very easy to parallelize. AmigaE is still an imperative-only language :)
What really matters is that 43 ESR is the last Rust-free version of Firefox. Porting that would be an order of magnitude more work than fixing Odyssey, but you'd still end up with an outdated browser.

@BSzili

We're doomed! Doomed! DOOMED I TELL YA!

@Joeled

If retro-surfing ever becomes a fad, we will be the platform to beat 8)

On a more serious note, once and if the endian issues are solved in webkit, will it be easy to update (I use the term easy in relation to how difficult it is to solve the current endian issues)?

@BSzili

Yes of course.
It's still interesting to see the dependencies to build the Rust compiler are not that high https://github.com/rust-lang/rust
The following should be considered though: https://metajack.im/2013/12/11/building-rust-code--current-issues/

@Elwood
GCC's dependencies aren't that high either. This seems to be a perfect opportunity to get back to my original point. Who is going to port the latest Firefox and maintain a compiler for a completely new language, if you can't even find someone to fix JavaScriptCore?

Agreed, and if the world around us is abandonning PPC, how coud we stay up-to-date with the very little amount of users/developers we have?
This will become soon a crucial question.

But it belongs to another thread. Let's concentrate on Odyssey progress right now.

Just to throw a wild idea out there: Amithlon apparently had a modified GCC compiler that generated x86 code which behaved as if it had 68k endianess. i.e. It was modified so that every memory access had it's endianess swapped. I wonder if something similar could be done for PPC, and then SOMEHOW used to just compile the JavaScript part of WebKit (e.g. javascript.o), such that the endian issues were resolved.

I'm sure there'd be a lot of difficulties trying to do something like that (e.g. how would the reverse-endian javascript code interact with the rest of WebKit running with normal endianess?), but I wonder if it might be less effort & more future-proof in the long run?

Well, just a crazy idea, feel free to ignore it

@Joeled

Quote:


-- eliyahu

@BSzili

How many developers we have? It's really confusing that nobody has will to fix WebKit. Or nobody cares about web browser on NG systems? Where is the problem?

"@Kas1e

At exit, when Odyssey window is just closed, I often have a requester saying something like "Wait until child end. Webcore file..."

Sorry, I wanted to grab the window but it closed itself.
This problem occurs with OS4Depot version or now with your latest build.

Thanks
"

I finally got it.

Quote:
Can bi-endian CPU's handle it ?

@kas1e

If you need a site which 100% displays the OWB Mediaplayer crash, just visit http://www.uberhumor.com

There are two to three small videos playing back at the right side of the page (all of them playing back the same vid, at least with Odyssey fix 4).
If it doesn't crash on the fist page, just scroll down and enter the second page, let the vids run and sooner or later it will crash.

Maybe the page will help to finally nail that annoying bug

great work on the fixes

@Raziel
I just clicked the link and just let it sit on that page. It started throwing up grim reapers after 5 minutes. Odyssey has a menu settings to disable image loading; it would be nice to have a menu setting to disable video loading and a pop-up menu to enable video load and play for a specific video. I hate auto-play videos when I just want to read the text on a WEB page.

@xenic

I'm with you, auto-play is the ng version of must-see ads...

@all
Feel free to help add functionality you wish : https://github.com/deadwood-pl/OdysseyWebBrowser

Why is it not possible to upload an image with Odyssey to bugzilla?
@kas1e can you fix it?It is annoying

@radzik Quote:
I think we still have quite a few developers... just mostly not with enough spare time to devote to a huge/complex project like Odyssey/WebKit (due to either not enough Amiga coding time, or too busy with other Amiga coding projects - or both in my case!).

I'd have thought that a web browser is one of *the* most important things on any OS these days, but it is also one of the largest & most difficult, since web browsers have become almost like mini OSes in their own right.

And well, Odyssey does basically work (for many sites anyway), so depending on the person they might not find it causes them much inconvenience. I might even speculate that developers tend to visit less demanding websites on the whole, since they're more likely to be coding than aimlessly browsing the web...

(oops - double post due to double-click on the Submit button! Odyssey bug? !?)

@kas

V4 tested here..
no dsi but freeze during loading youtube page.

Luigi

@ChrisH
That is part of the problem. I wonder how many developers were approached whether they were interested. Everybody just waits for deadwood to do everything, instead of trying to recruit someone to do the job. I highly doubt that any of the PPC Linux guys were asked for example, some of whom even frequent Amiga-related forums due to their involvement with A-Eon.