100005 - Need "broadway"(=xrx) plugin

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, enhancement)

Description

[Roland Mainz]

We should have a "broadway"(=xrx") plugin for Mozilla5.
The X.org plugin does not work as the current plugin API as incompatible to it
(and to most other non-mainstream NS4.x plugins, too... ;-(( ).

Comment 1

[Roland Mainz]

We could implement this in a crossplatform way using the WeiredX JAVA Xserver.
the following setup works for me:
-- snip --
% wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/weirdx/weirdx-1.0.30.jar
% java -Xmx256m -Dweirdx.display.autosize=true -Dweirdx.displaynum=20
-Dweirdx.ddxwindow=com.jcraft.weirdx.DDXWindowImpSwing
-Dweirdx.windowmode=RootlessWM -Dweirdx.display.visual=TrueColor16
-Dweirdx.display.acl=+ -jar ~/download/weirdx-1.0.30.jar &
% export DISPLAY=myipaddress:20.0
% wget http://www.broadway-info.com/xdemos/xeyes.rx
% xrx xeyes.rx
-- snip --
(you only have to figure out your real IP adress, that's all...)

Comment 2

[Peter Lubczynski]

Reporter: What part of the NPAPI in Mozilla is incompatible with broadway
plugin? Where can we get the plugin to test? Do you have a testcase that shows
the problem?

Comment 3

[Roland Mainz]

Peter Lubczynski:
> Reporter: What part of the NPAPI in Mozilla is incompatible with broadway
> plugin?

No real clue - I would try to fix this myself if I would have more info... ;-/

> Where can we get the plugin to test?

Source is part of the X11 sources, look for libxrx or libxrxnest
Most X11 distributions are shipping with that plugin by default; for example
Solaris shipps it as /usr/openwin/lib/libxrx.so.1

> Do you have a testcase that shows the problem?

Testcases are available in above's example URL.

Comment 4

[Roland Mainz]

Stealing from serge ...

Comment 5

[Roland Mainz]

Accepting ...

Comment 6

[Roland Mainz]

Attachment: Patch for 2001-12-12-08-trunk

Comment 7

[Roland Mainz]

CC:'ing gerv as a scream for help how to solve the license issue with the
attached patch ....

Comment 8

[Roland Mainz]

plan:
I'd like to get this plugin build and shipped by default with the next
milestone.
The resulting binary is very small (<=24kb), it won't hurt shipping it ...
(grabbing a binary build from the X.org sources is NOT an option as our plugin
API still has issues (I filed bugs but it seems noone is working on that) - and
the original plugin code itself has issues, too))

Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

I am not going to spend ages trying to work out what on earth you mean :-)

Please be extremely clear:
- what does this patch do?
- why do we need it?
- where did all the code come from? Be detailed.
- where do you hope to put it in the tree?

Gerv

Comment 10

[Roland Mainz]

Gervase Markham wrote:
> I am not going to spend ages trying to work out what on earth you mean :-)
>
> Please be extremely clear:
> - what does this patch do?
It adds support for OpenGroups Broadway standard to Mozilla ("Broadway" has a
homepage, see http://www.broadway-info.com/).
 
Basically (short description, I am sure you do not want the long one :-) it
makes it possible to use X11 applications as plugin (X11 application displays
itself in the plugin area and runns on the server side).

> - why do we need it?
1. The original X.org plugin does not work due various issues in both Mozilla
and the plugin itself. I am now begging since nearly a whole year to get this
fixed - and noone cared about it.
Finally I took over this bug and filed a fixed version of the plugin as a
quick&working solution ...
2. We have some applications which make use of the broadway stuff. It would be
nice to use the Zilla instead of the old&lame NS3.x
3. I'd like to make broadway more widespread as it currentl is. This requires
support from one big browser vendor ... :)

> - where did all the code come from? Be detailed.
I grabbed the source tarballs from the X11R6.6 release, copied the plugin
sources from xc/programs/xrx/ into my mozilla tree (see
ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.6/xc/programs/xrx/ for an unpacked version of the
tarballs) and then hacked the beast until it worked within Mozilla ...

> - where do you hope to put it in the tree?
mozilla/modules/plugin/samples/xrx/unix/
or (as timeless suggested)
mozilla/modules/plugin/xrx/unix/
I'd like to make it part of a standard Mozilla build[1] (which rules-out places
like mozilla/other-licenses or mozilla/extensions/) ...

[1]=as I wrote, the resulting binary is very small (smaller than the
libnullplugin.so plugin) - it won't hurt ...

Comment 11

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

As I understand the current mozilla.org licensing policy, if it's not
tri-licensed, it goes into other-licenses. 

[e-mail] is the right man to rule (or say who should rule) on:
a) whether we want this and,
b) if we do, where it should go.

CCing him.

Gerv

Comment 12

[Nicolás Lichtmaier]

This could be *very* cool. This would mean e.g. running a GTK+ app as if it were
an applet.

It's a pitty that the code is already here and has been long forgotten.

Comment 13

[Josh Aas]

I'm not totally sure what this is about but I'm pretty sure we're not going to do it any more.

Comment 14

[Florin Strugariu [:Bebe]]

Attachment: Link to Github pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/pull/18578

Comment 15

[Florin Strugariu [:Bebe]]

Comment on attachment 8410959 [details] [review]
Link to Github pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/pull/18578

Sorry wrong bug