[odf-discuss] Native ODF support in browsers

[Martin Ellis]

On Friday 20 October 2006 10:31, Alex Hudson wrote:
> Martin Ellis wrote:
> > How is embedding a KHTML part in konqueror any more 'native'
> > than embedding any other kpart in konqueror?
>
> Where did I claim that it was more native?

OK, you didn't.   I thought that you were suggesting that a web 
browser was 'native display', but that KWord in konqueror 
was 'plugin'.

The terms you're using don't seem to fit with my use of them, so I'm 
left clutching at straws until we find some common ground.

> In plugin architectures, each plugin is a piece of software which
> conforms to a specific API. Aside from that API, you can consider
> the software a "black box", of which you know no details. This what
> I was referring to as it's own little world.
>
> Compare this to, for example, SVG support. Where SVG support is
> available, it is either native or plug-in. Where SVG support is
> provided by a plug-in, the browser is able to display an SVG image
> but not able to do anything with it beyond the limitations of the
> plug-in API. For example, modifying the DOM of the image using
> standard Javascript. Where SVG support is native, you can do that
> within the browser itself.

I'm getting the impression that this is not a technical distinction
relevant to KDE that you're making then.

KHTML is a KPart plugin.  I've written a program that uses KHTML as a 
black box, where I don't care about the details of the document.

I've also written separate code that embeds KHTML, and does access the 
document (using DOM, in fact).

The main KWord plugin is also a KPart.  I can embed that in an 
application, and access the document object in a similar manner to
a KHTML document.  I just make sure that I'm using KWord's API on
KPart, and not the KHTML API.

On the other hand, if I don't want to manipulate the document, I can 
just treat them both in the same way, without worrying whether it's 
an ODT file or an HTML doc.

So which of the two above do you consider 'native' and which do you 
consider 'plugin'?

Perhaps it would help if you could explain what use case you want to 
achieve that is not possible with the current architecture?

Martin