5 ms·

What's the superior alternative? (serious question)

by azakai 13y ago

adamnemecek 13y ago
I don't think that he knows. No one does. But that does not mean that it isn't something that should be discussed.
- azakai 13y ago
  Well, of course, I don't think any reasonable person would say it shouldn't be discussed. I was just hoping there was some interesting project already underway I could read about.
whyme 13y ago
At a really high level... Create an entirely different model. One that acts as a hybrid between a full blown inefficient co-ordinate system and, plausibly, a more efficient box model. We could start by modelling 'movement' which equates to objects having 1. A reference point, 2. A magnitude and 3. A direction. It would be beneficial to do this in such a way that one could apply functions to said model achieving a reactive design that gives you a sense of a full blown co-ordinate system while achieving simpler mechanisms for ease in development and efficiency. I know that's pretty high level stuff, but in my mind I can see a fairly clear path to achieve a significant improvement.
- azakai 13y ago
  Cool, that sounds interesting. I certainly think it's worth experimenting with stuff like that in parallel to projects like Servo which optimize current standards, long-term it's hard to tell which will be better.
- iSnow 13y ago
  You won't displace entrenched technology with an entirely different model, no matter how good. Sorry, this is just a pipe dream. The real competition for the web are the walled gardens of iOS and Android App development.
  - whyme 13y ago
    If iOS or android app development succeed, then you would be proving yourself wrong as they would be displacing the entrenched technology. It's that, or they are not real competition. I have no pipe dreams. Displacing the aforementioned technologies with something better is inevitable. I just gave an example of how easy better ideas are to be found.
randomdata 13y ago
I always wonder what it would be like if the browser was just a thin virtual machine, something like Java had hoped to become, and then you could specify the components you wanted to run on top of that. If, for example, you are serving an HTML document, you could point the browser to also download the WebKit renderer, or whatever. If you're building something more akin to an application, you might use some other framework to host your application.
- azakai 13y ago
  That's certainly been discussed many times. It's an interesting concept. The main downside though is that if each site has its own renderer, with no shared concepts like the current web has, then you lose out on things like easily making accessibility tools, web scraping, etc. etc. The benefits are also clear though, basically not being limited to current standards.
  - stoptalkingshit 13y ago
    People have been parroting this nonsense for years. You have WebGL etc in the browser now. Web "pages" aren't pages anymore, and there is no way to enforce semantically meaningful markup. All that's been accomplished by fighting against the future is to ensure that all these low level services were implemented poorly. You can have all your high-level, common concepts but they need to be built onto a layered system. What we have now is a laughable mess, and it proves that the browser vendors have no idea what they're doing.
- iSnow 13y ago
  Of course then Google would have you download Webkit as a renderer and NaCl as an execution environment. Which would be only available on the latest version of your OS. And Apple would shove some Obj-C renderer down your device, only this would support only iOS, MacOS and Windows, not Android and certainly not Linux. FOSS-Shops would transmit only a repackaged build system which then would start downloading source packages and start compiling them in your browser. 3min later and you could actually start using the application. I really fail to see the advantage here.
TheZenPsycho 13y ago
In spite of the firmly stated opinion I left elsewhere in this thread, I do indulge in imagining how all this tech stack could be better. First things first, I found out the other day that someone actually built the major part of my vision: Constraints Oriented stylesheets (using cassowary). http://gridstylesheets.org/ http://gridstylesheets.org/ This is how iOS now handles layout. It makes easy things easy, and hard things achievable. Exactly what you'd want. Beyond this, I think that html has too many tags. To put another way, the browser should not generally permit <script> and <style> to exist in the same context that <em> can exist. onblah= attributes were a terrible mistake that we'll never be able to undo. It would be cool if there was something like a <content> tag which, within it, only permits content oriented mark up, while disabling scripting and styling tags. Likewise, forms, scripting, meta tags and linkages should be in isolated contexts. And finally, what idiot decided that & ampersands should have a prominent position in many URLS and then use & for entity encoding in html, a completely different purpose. URLS now have to be http://entity&encoded http://entity&encoded uhg. so stupid. what would be wrong with <amp> or <amp/> instead? or since we've freed up & for normal expected use, <gt> <lt> and <quot> ah well.
- ufo 13y ago
  The worst part about ampersands in URLs is that not only you have to escape them but so few people know that you need to escape it!
- Ygg2 13y ago
  How paralelizable would Cassowary be? It seems it adds a lot of inter-dependencies between elements, no?
  - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
    I don't know the algorithm well enough to say for certain. but I get the impression it involves a clever work around to the interdependencies. it converts equalities and inequalities into a system of linear equations. It then converts this system into a matrix form it calls a "tableau". The solver appears to work by repeated applications of matrix operations which may be paralelizable. but I'm not sure. This is different from how physics engines resolve constraints, one after another. In a matrix form they just kind of all get optimised "at once" the paper describing the algorithm is here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/constraints/solvers/cassowary-tochi.pdf https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cs.washington....

What's the superior alternative? (serious question)

by azakai 13y ago

What's the superior alternative? (serious question)

adamnemecek 13y ago

I don't think that he knows. No one does. But that does not mean that it isn't something that should be discussed.

azakai 13y ago
Well, of course, I don't think any reasonable person would say it shouldn't be discussed. I was just hoping there was some interesting project already underway I could read about.

whyme 13y ago

At a really high level... Create an entirely different model. One that acts as a hybrid between a full blown inefficient co-ordinate system and, plausibly, a more efficient box model. We could start by modelling 'movement' which equates to objects having 1. A reference point, 2. A magnitude and 3. A direction. It would be beneficial to do this in such a way that one could apply functions to said model achieving a reactive design that gives you a sense of a full blown co-ordinate system while achieving simpler mechanisms for ease in development and efficiency. I know that's pretty high level stuff, but in my mind I can see a fairly clear path to achieve a significant improvement.

azakai 13y ago
Cool, that sounds interesting. I certainly think it's worth experimenting with stuff like that in parallel to projects like Servo which optimize current standards, long-term it's hard to tell which will be better.
iSnow 13y ago
You won't displace entrenched technology with an entirely different model, no matter how good. Sorry, this is just a pipe dream. The real competition for the web are the walled gardens of iOS and Android App development.
- whyme 13y ago
  If iOS or android app development succeed, then you would be proving yourself wrong as they would be displacing the entrenched technology. It's that, or they are not real competition. I have no pipe dreams. Displacing the aforementioned technologies with something better is inevitable. I just gave an example of how easy better ideas are to be found.

randomdata 13y ago

I always wonder what it would be like if the browser was just a thin virtual machine, something like Java had hoped to become, and then you could specify the components you wanted to run on top of that. If, for example, you are serving an HTML document, you could point the browser to also download the WebKit renderer, or whatever. If you're building something more akin to an application, you might use some other framework to host your application.

azakai 13y ago
That's certainly been discussed many times. It's an interesting concept. The main downside though is that if each site has its own renderer, with no shared concepts like the current web has, then you lose out on things like easily making accessibility tools, web scraping, etc. etc. The benefits are also clear though, basically not being limited to current standards.
- stoptalkingshit 13y ago
  People have been parroting this nonsense for years. You have WebGL etc in the browser now. Web "pages" aren't pages anymore, and there is no way to enforce semantically meaningful markup. All that's been accomplished by fighting against the future is to ensure that all these low level services were implemented poorly. You can have all your high-level, common concepts but they need to be built onto a layered system. What we have now is a laughable mess, and it proves that the browser vendors have no idea what they're doing.
iSnow 13y ago
Of course then Google would have you download Webkit as a renderer and NaCl as an execution environment. Which would be only available on the latest version of your OS. And Apple would shove some Obj-C renderer down your device, only this would support only iOS, MacOS and Windows, not Android and certainly not Linux. FOSS-Shops would transmit only a repackaged build system which then would start downloading source packages and start compiling them in your browser. 3min later and you could actually start using the application. I really fail to see the advantage here.

TheZenPsycho 13y ago

In spite of the firmly stated opinion I left elsewhere in this thread, I do indulge in imagining how all this tech stack could be better. First things first, I found out the other day that someone actually built the major part of my vision: Constraints Oriented stylesheets (using cassowary). http://gridstylesheets.org/ http://gridstylesheets.org/ This is how iOS now handles layout. It makes easy things easy, and hard things achievable. Exactly what you'd want. Beyond this, I think that html has too many tags. To put another way, the browser should not generally permit <script> and <style> to exist in the same context that <em> can exist. onblah= attributes were a terrible mistake that we'll never be able to undo. It would be cool if there was something like a <content> tag which, within it, only permits content oriented mark up, while disabling scripting and styling tags. Likewise, forms, scripting, meta tags and linkages should be in isolated contexts. And finally, what idiot decided that & ampersands should have a prominent position in many URLS and then use & for entity encoding in html, a completely different purpose. URLS now have to be http://entity&encoded http://entity&encoded uhg. so stupid. what would be wrong with <amp> or <amp/> instead? or since we've freed up & for normal expected use, <gt> <lt> and <quot> ah well.

ufo 13y ago
The worst part about ampersands in URLs is that not only you have to escape them but so few people know that you need to escape it!
Ygg2 13y ago
How paralelizable would Cassowary be? It seems it adds a lot of inter-dependencies between elements, no?
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  I don't know the algorithm well enough to say for certain. but I get the impression it involves a clever work around to the interdependencies. it converts equalities and inequalities into a system of linear equations. It then converts this system into a matrix form it calls a "tableau". The solver appears to work by repeated applications of matrix operations which may be paralelizable. but I'm not sure. This is different from how physics engines resolve constraints, one after another. In a matrix form they just kind of all get optimised "at once" the paper describing the algorithm is here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/constraints/solvers/cassowary-tochi.pdf https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cs.washington....