[Gambas-user] Gambas as firefox plugin !!!

[Rob]

On Monday 23 November 2009 05:06 pm, nospam.nospam.nospam at ...626... wrote:
> My opinion is that it is a terrible idea. For starters, how do you plan
>  to install the runtime libraries, using sudo apt-get or distribute the
>  libraries as as part of the plugin? And once you've decided that, how
>  many hours will users on slow connections have to wait while umpteen
>  megabytes of support libraries are downloaded and installed?

Gambas as a plugin would have to include the barest minimum of components 
(maybe just SDL, some embeddable database, etc., and the Gambas-based 
components that require only those) and those components would have to all 
be based on libraries that can be statically linked, like all the other 
Netscape-style plugins out there.  But having such a limited subset of 
components would keep the plugin pretty small in modern terms, certainly 
far smaller than Java, for example.

And as with Java, there would have to be a mechanism for downloading other 
software components, whether at each runtime or cached on the disk.

> > If there is a Gambas web browser plugin then the Gambas will be the
> > first Basic language that can be run everywhere due to browser
> > (firefox) and will have not limited only to Linux.
> Really? So you plan to run a Google-sized freenx server farm for Windows
> users then?

Gambas has been built successfully under Windows, though getting gb.sdl and 
friends to work would be left as an exercise for.... well, someone who has 
a Windows machine, for starters.  Not most people here.  Still, that is 
possible.

(Original poster wrote:)
> > Also this means that programmers can write easy known Basic
> > applications that can be run in any hardware that runs a browser (any
> > device from cell phone to pc).

This is a misconception: most cell phone browsers do not support Netscape-
style plugins, and those that do (like the Palm Pre's) don't support 
standard x86 Netscape-style plugins.

While I disagree with Mr. Nameless Angry Guy about the reasons why this 
isn't a sound idea, I do agree that it probably won't work too well.

1. This method of popularizing a language has been tried before with Tcl 
and Perl (probably others too, but those are the ones I know).  I think 
that in both cases, it did more damage to the language's reputation than 
good, because of the impression it gives of "me too".  

2. The functionality that would have to be removed to make it self-
contained and small would take away a lot of its selling points.

3. Gambas hasn't been written with sandboxing or any other particular 
security concerns in mind.  You need that in a language implemented as a 
browser plugin.

4. Plugins to add browser functionality are on their way out thanks to 
HTML5 and greater attention paid to standards by every vendor except 
Microsoft.  In another year or two, even Flash will be regarded as a legacy 
technology as more people start running browsers with native video support.

That said, I did start playing around with trying to hack the Gambas 
interpreter into a Palm Pre WebOS-compatible ARM Netscape plugin, since 
plugins are literally the only way to put non-Javascript code in your WebOS 
application.  Didn't get very far (got hung up on the same ARM 
crosscompilation issue as someone else who recently posted, before even 
making any code changes).  But I'm still looking at doing that, as well as 
trying to get a minimal Gambas/gb.sdl Nintendo DS port going which would be 
tougher, with little to no POSIX compatibility available.

Rob