Servo’s new home • Hacker News Board

Re: Servo’s new home

#51

Post by ddevault » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

Is Servo planning to get back to the whole "writing a web rendering engine" part, and backburner the "let's play around with VR and stuff" plans? Because until then, I don't think Servo is especially interesting as a project. As far as I can tell, the last few years of Servo have been characterized by an obsession with chasing shiny things, and not with the kind of rigid and dedicated engineering efforts necessary to write a new web engine.

Re: Servo’s new home

#52

Post by SimonSapin » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

the_other wrote: post #13

On the face of it, this sounds great! I hope it leads to bold new things. It also produces an interesting coherence: Google + MS -> Blink Apple -> Webkit Linux -> Servo All the main OSs now have their own web rendering engine. The 00s saw anti-trust against MS for this practice (ok, for the rigid way MS forced their engine onto their users)... but today the market has coalesced around the same core idea, cementing th…

Despite the name the Linux kernel is only one of many projects hosted by the Linux Foundation these days. Browser engine to operating system relationships haven’t changed with this move.

Re: Servo’s new home

#53

Post by hobofan » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

Pretty good news day for Rust between this, min_const_generics stabilizing[0], and CXX 1.0 (including a nice "book")[1] being released.

EDIT: Oh, and the Rust performance book[2].

[0]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/79135

[1]: https://cxx.rs

[2]: https://nnethercote.github.io/perf-book/

Re: Servo’s new home

#54

Post by unethical_ban » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #38

pqoek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Mozilla not betting on Rust anymore?

Mozilla has decided to move to a different mission less about improving the web and more about enacting things that make them money, so they can continue to pay a large CEO salary and push policy objectives against free speech. Unfortunately Mozilla seemed to go from "awesome" to really disappointing in a very short time window.

Wow, that is a hugely loaded statement. Even if it is 100% true, the level of derision and bias should make any person not familiar with the situation question everything you say.

If you're going to be that biased, at least back it up. And by back it up, I mean at LEAST throwing in some statements of fact, if not URLs.

Re: Servo’s new home

#55

Post by black_puppydog » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

I'm happy to hear servo is going to continue to exist.

Please forgive the beginner's question: my understanding is that servo is "just" an engine, which needs to be wrapped into a browser to really become usable. I've just tried (not for the first time, btw) your tech demo, which I think illustrates this perfectly. The rendering was lightning fast, but it's not a full browser.

You state that your goals are "to provide a high-performance, safe rendering engine for embedding in other applications."

Given that browsers are notoriously big software projects, do you think it will be an obstacle that servo is no longer tightly integrated with any sizeable browser project?

Of course, I'm asking because I'm really afraid that the amazing effort that is servo might dwindle into irrelevance simply because there is no "killer app" for it, and embedding it into several small/niche products simply doesn't generate the same involvement as a web browser.

Re: Servo’s new home

#56

Post by edoceo » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

brian_herman__ wrote: post #27

edoceo wrote: post #16

Awesome! I've been tire kicking their nightlys. I was thinking about building a "browser" but really mean just wrapping an engine. With the shakeup at M I was nervous that Servo would die, it's got a lot of promise. This is great news. Now, thoughts on a UI framework for Rust?

https://azul.rs/ Maybe?

Neat! Thanks for this!

Re: Servo’s new home

#57

Post by an_opabinia » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #36

lastontheboat wrote: post #2

We've been cagey about this over the months since the Servo team at Mozilla was disbanded, since there were various moving pieces that needed to fall into place. We're excited about the possibility for Servo to continue growing and evolving in its new home, though!

What's the plan exactly? Will there be a Servo browser that integrates the servo rendering engine with some open source components (for instance from Firefox, WebKit or Chromium) that will let us use the engine stand-alone, or is it "just" going to be an engine for embedding in third-party programs? The former seems like it would be a huge amount of work, but if it's the latter I fear for the long term survival of th…

It’s tough. People really do want Flash, it’s just Google Chrome now.

The bigger question is when will Mobile Safari retire its WebKit fork? What role will Servo play in that inevitable end point?

Re: Servo’s new home

#58

Post by Finnucane » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

black_puppydog wrote: post #55

I'm happy to hear servo is going to continue to exist. Please forgive the beginner's question: my understanding is that servo is "just" an engine, which needs to be wrapped into a browser to really become usable. I've just tried (not for the first time, btw) your tech demo, which I think illustrates this perfectly. The rendering was lightning fast, but it's not a full browser. You state that your goals are "to provid…

Presumably any app that wants this kind of rendering could make use of it, not just browsers--consider all the apps that now use Electron for this.

Re: Servo’s new home

#59

Post by akiselev » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #49

simias wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the plan exactly? Will there be a Servo browser that integrates the servo rendering engine with some open source components (for instance from Firefox, WebKit or Chromium) that will let us use the engine stand-alone, or is it "just" going to be an engine for embedding in third-party programs? The former seems like it would be a huge amount of work, but if it's the latter I fear for the long term survival of th…

With respect to the latter, I agree that it seems unlikely that the project would attract users. Maybe it’s my own ignorance, but I don’t know what kind of apps (besides web browsers) would want just the web rendering engine and not various other components in a web browser. What are the responsibilities of a “web rendering engine” anyway? How tightly coupled is it to the DOM? Does it “own” the DOM, or is that owned…

You send Servo raw display lists, which is a format tailored specifically to represent the DOM but it acts like a generic slicing compositor in practice. It's not coupled in the classical sense - the display lists represent shapes, colors, stacks, rounded borders, etc..

It's more like Skia and can be used to develop GUI frameworks (which is exciting because Servo is Rust and Rust's GUI story is still in its early stages).

Re: Servo’s new home

#60

Post by wizzwizz4 » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #38

pqoek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Mozilla not betting on Rust anymore?

Mozilla has decided to move to a different mission less about improving the web and more about enacting things that make them money, so they can continue to pay a large CEO salary and push policy objectives against free speech. Unfortunately Mozilla seemed to go from "awesome" to really disappointing in a very short time window.

Mozilla currently cares more about surviving than its main mission. And yes, it can't accomplish its mission if it dies, but don't they understand? If Mozilla falls, another will take its place.

The way to kill Mozilla is from the inside: to quash its soul.