Re: GUI and redisplay work (was: SVG widget in GNU Emacs)

[Stefan Kangas]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> So I think we need to see a Web engine as just another "backend
> display", just like currently have X11, Gtk, NS, w32, and tty backends.
> :-(

Interesting stuff.  I don't have much of any substance to add, but I
realize that the discussion is quite important and I hope someone
would start serious work on something in this direction.

One thing I have been thinking about is how you would fit Emacs
concept of a buffer going from 'point-min' to 'point-max' and our
concept of a window as an x/y grid onto a HTML+CSS page in the general
case, where text and lines might be overlapping and displayed in all
kinds of weird and wonderful ways.

To take just a very simple example, when I say 'forward-line' in a web
page, I want to move point to the element (text or image) visually
above the current line, even if that section comes later in the actual
HTML file.  With CSS, text can be moved from anywhere, to anywhere on
the page, and that's not even considering what JavaScript might be
doing.

Does this present any fundamental difficulties, or are those merely
details to be worked out?