[mythtv] Replace the QtWebKit code

[Peter Bennett]

On 3/11/22 05:48, Paul Harrison wrote:
> On 11/03/2022 01:48, Peter Bennett wrote:
>
>>
>> I am a taker. My Initial plan is:
>>
>> 1. Find out what all in MythTV and plugins use QtWebKit.
>>
>> 2. Test all the features that use it and make sure they work..
>>
>> 3. Port from QtWebKit to QtWebEngine
>>
>> 4. Test all the features that use it and make sure they work..
>>
>> Does anybody have issues with using QtWebEngine as the replacement?
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>
> Am I going mad or have we not been here before. I'm sure I have 
> discussed this several times on IRC?
>
>
> I have or had an initial patch to replace WebKit with WebEngine but 
> basically I couldn't get it to keep rendering properly. What happens 
> is any MythUI update to the screen stops the WebEngine widget from 
> updating. If you run the frontend in a window and move the focus to 
> another window and back to the frontend it will start to update again 
> until another MythUI update stops it again. If you force the QT 
> painter in the frontend it works OK so it appears to be some OpenGL 
> compatibility. When I started to look more deeply I did notice our 
> OpenGL renderer does make it's opengl contexts active but while the 
> code is there to release the contexts it is commented out so we never 
> release them. I'm no OpenGL expert so don't know if that is the real 
> problem. The QT docs does say the WebEngine widget does require shared 
> OpenGL contexts which we do have some support for but if we never 
> release the contexts not sure it is going to work.
>
>
> I do remember doing an experiment to just have MythUI draw a simple 
> rotating box using QML and that showed the same behavior so it would 
> appear to be our rendering code that is somehow at fault and not 
> something unique to WebEngine.
>
>
> I do feel strongly that having a working web browser widget  is 
> important to the future of MythTV if we want to modernize it to 
> support streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, Prime, iPlayer, 
> Pluto TV etc.
>
>
> Paul H.
>
>
>
No you are not going mad. Thanks for the information. I am new to the 
webkit problem. Stuart asked if anybody would take on replacing webkit, 
so I volunteered, thinking it was a simple task after looking at
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebenginewidgets-qtwebkitportingguide.html
It is clearly not a simple task from what you have said.

It was discussed yesterday in IRC, and the suggested option was to get 
rid of webkit, thinking that not much of importance uses it. Some things 
may use it just for a text display and those could be replaced with a 
simple text display widget. Also discussed was getting rid of some of 
the plugins, especially if they use webkit.

Does mythmusic use webkit? Can it use something else if we drop webkit 
and do not include webengine?

Any other suggestions?

Peter