4 ms·

Name aside, I really like the concept of liberating various websites’ functionality from HTML and the web browser platform. That feels like the dream of the old

Name aside, I really like the concept of liberating various websites’ functionality from HTML and the web browser platform. That feels like the dream of the old interoperable web and it aims to make life easier for blind folks which is cool if it works!

jiofih 6y ago
Isn’t this simply replacing HTML with the QT XML markup and C++ code instead of JavaScript? What is the liberating part?
- twat 6y ago
  Liberate the titty!
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  my gut says this style of application lends itself to less abuse by trackers and surveillance tech than a general purpose browser, but i could just be naive.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  If this is done half well, it will liberate the CPU cycles from tons of pointless JS. Also, probably less reliant on analytics and third parties, unless they are baked into core APIs.
- spoondan 6y ago
  No. Look at the cookbook application (http://weboob.org/applications/qcookboob http://weboob.org/applications/qcookboob). It incorporates multiple sources of recipes behind a single, consistent, tailor-made interface. This pattern repeats in the other applications. They are not taking a single website and transforming it into a native application. They are building applications to service specific domains that use the web as a data source. They are also bringing web content into the command line. They have a large number of console applications. For example, there's a command and REPL for tracking shipments. Putting aside the misunderstanding of what this actually is, the premise of your question seems to be that "simply replacing" one technology with another can't be "liberating." I think that's wrong in general as well for the specific example of transforming a web app to a native one (though these seem to be Python, not C++). The web has constraining properties: browsers that provide rich interaction with modern web content are resource intensive; different websites have wildly different accessibility stories (and the lack of UI and terminological consistency in content is, itself, a hurdle for some people); ads, popups, and other distractions are harmful to load times, network usage, and user experience; and on and on. There's plenty of examples of transformations from one technology to another that trade out the source's constraints for the destination's.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    I think you actually misunderstood my comment. You know what are also “applications to service specific domains that uses the web as a data source”? Web pages. Deliver the QML over the wire here and you just reinvented a kind of browser, that consumes html|json data from the web and has a different native UI library.
    - hydragit 6y ago
      Web pages use a data source behind the scenes, but web pages are NOT a data source. A rendered Qt app is not a data source either. weboob builds plain-old objects (or JSON), it is a data source. The Qt applications are just an example front-end using weboob data source as a data source. Furthermore, this data source is made for aggregation/standardization, as weboob returns results in the same format whatever the site you choose, so it's still better than if each site proposed an API specific to the site itself.
froasty 6y ago
I really wish the fellow travelers behind Emacs would launch secondary projects to act as middleware for browsers and window compositors. Having a singule abstraction layer to control everything from userland through web platforms would be a dream for accessibility and returning control to users.
- rashkov 6y ago
  I would personally find that super convenient as well, but I was surprised to learn that the accessibility story in Linux for blind users was actually in quite a bad state. I thought that text based interfaces should be great for accessibility, but it really is all about screen readers and they apparently don’t work very well under Linux. There seems to be a network effect where windows screen readers get the most attention and so the community has somewhat standardized on that.

jiofih 6y ago

Isn’t this simply replacing HTML with the QT XML markup and C++ code instead of JavaScript? What is the liberating part?

twat 6y ago
Liberate the titty!
toiletfuneral 6y ago
my gut says this style of application lends itself to less abuse by trackers and surveillance tech than a general purpose browser, but i could just be naive.
rhn_mk1 6y ago
If this is done half well, it will liberate the CPU cycles from tons of pointless JS. Also, probably less reliant on analytics and third parties, unless they are baked into core APIs.
spoondan 6y ago
No. Look at the cookbook application (http://weboob.org/applications/qcookboob http://weboob.org/applications/qcookboob). It incorporates multiple sources of recipes behind a single, consistent, tailor-made interface. This pattern repeats in the other applications. They are not taking a single website and transforming it into a native application. They are building applications to service specific domains that use the web as a data source. They are also bringing web content into the command line. They have a large number of console applications. For example, there's a command and REPL for tracking shipments. Putting aside the misunderstanding of what this actually is, the premise of your question seems to be that "simply replacing" one technology with another can't be "liberating." I think that's wrong in general as well for the specific example of transforming a web app to a native one (though these seem to be Python, not C++). The web has constraining properties: browsers that provide rich interaction with modern web content are resource intensive; different websites have wildly different accessibility stories (and the lack of UI and terminological consistency in content is, itself, a hurdle for some people); ads, popups, and other distractions are harmful to load times, network usage, and user experience; and on and on. There's plenty of examples of transformations from one technology to another that trade out the source's constraints for the destination's.
- jiofih 6y ago
  I think you actually misunderstood my comment. You know what are also “applications to service specific domains that uses the web as a data source”? Web pages. Deliver the QML over the wire here and you just reinvented a kind of browser, that consumes html|json data from the web and has a different native UI library.
  - hydragit 6y ago
    Web pages use a data source behind the scenes, but web pages are NOT a data source. A rendered Qt app is not a data source either. weboob builds plain-old objects (or JSON), it is a data source. The Qt applications are just an example front-end using weboob data source as a data source. Furthermore, this data source is made for aggregation/standardization, as weboob returns results in the same format whatever the site you choose, so it's still better than if each site proposed an API specific to the site itself.

froasty 6y ago

I really wish the fellow travelers behind Emacs would launch secondary projects to act as middleware for browsers and window compositors. Having a singule abstraction layer to control everything from userland through web platforms would be a dream for accessibility and returning control to users.

rashkov 6y ago
I would personally find that super convenient as well, but I was surprised to learn that the accessibility story in Linux for blind users was actually in quite a bad state. I thought that text based interfaces should be great for accessibility, but it really is all about screen readers and they apparently don’t work very well under Linux. There seems to be a network effect where windows screen readers get the most attention and so the community has somewhat standardized on that.