Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 21:40:12 -0400 From: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: hasty@rah.star-gate.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Plugin? (Re: Complaining at Warner Brothers? ) Message-ID: <199706160140.VAA15678@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <9122.866422780@time.cdrom.com> (jkh@time.cdrom.com)
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Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 17:59:40 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Seriously, are you, umm, serious in these questions? Blowing off plug-ins would be a sad mistake, and not only because we *need* commercial folks to provide working plug-ins for us (a popular 3rd-party browser with such support also perhaps shaming Netscape into being a bit more aggressive with Navigator) but also because they're the only semi-reasonable method for extending the browser along much more radical lines than "helpers" can for you, and there are _end users_ who might be perfectly happy to provide source for their plug-ins if you would only support plug-ins in the first place, eh? Wait a minute. We all agree that we have a problem because Netscape won't give us their source and let us adapt it to their needs, right? And now we turn around and say that we're perfectly happy if the RealAudio and Shockwave folks provide us with programs for which we don't have the source? I see a double standard here. As far as end users who want to provide the source: you can do a lot more to improve a program if you can change its source than you can with some plugin API. The initial plugin API netscape designed is considered brain-damaged by many people. (I haven't bothered trying to figure out exactly what it is myself.) One example that comes to mind is the PNG support. At least in the first version of the plugin, there were some things which simply not possible which the people writing the PNG plugin wanted to do. The API limits what can actually be done. (I forget exactly what the issues were. I think transparency didn't work, for example.) Please, support some form of plug-ins. It's not that hard to design a reasonable plug-in API and FreeBSD has perfectly usable dl*() routines. Do you consider Netscape's API `reasonable'? I don't think I do, based on what I've heard. Being able to change the source is the ultimate API. :-) Seriously, can you give me one specific example of a case where a user is going to provide a useful plugin for which it would make more sense to have a plugin than actually changing the source? Second, even if I were doped up on a combination of Wild Turkey, LSD, DMT and ether, I couldn't for a moment expect the likes of Shockwave and RealAudio to (giggle) release their sources to some 3rd party just for that (guffaw) warm fuzzy feeling. Maybe if the 3rd party also had a couple of million dollars, sure, but... Sheesh! :) I will assume that you were not serious with your second question. :-) No, I don't really expect it. But if someone else writes a compatible replacement, that would be fine. Once upon a time, AT&T controlled the Unix sources. Compatible replacements have been written. It could happen.
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