Browser status update from OS/2 VOICE and BWW Bitwise Works, update 13

Details

Written by Roderick Klein

Category: Software

Published: 13 February 2022

Why Otter Browser status updates were not published over the last couple of months

Let me first of all say that it has taken too long to send the OS/2 community an update informing you what the status is of the new Qt WebKit based Otter browser.

Updates to the OS/2 community have not been sent out for a number of reasons.

The first is because only three people work at  bww bitwise works.  Silvan Scherrer runs 2 other companies next to bww bitwise works and does the OS/2 work as a labour of love. Herwig has not been able to contribute for personal reasons for a long time. Dmitriy is employed full time and does just about all the development. Silvan Scherrer helps where possible, but has limited time.

The second is that at OS/2 VOICE the funding campaign and writing the newsletters is done by me (Roderick). I perform all OS/2 VOICE work next to my full time job. I have had things happening in my personal life over the last couple of months in 2021 that have prevented me from putting in the time needed to send out timely updates.

When it comes to the development of new Otter Browser, since about August 2021 all funding had dried up at bww bitwise works and OS/2 VOICE.   As a result development of the browser stalled in September 2021.

Current status of the Otter Browser

The current Otter Browser build has been distributed to a limited group of testers. The current build is not sufficiently stable to allow it to be more widely distributed.

A small group of testers got access to the Otter Browser and are collecting the crashes reports.  These are being reported to bww bitwise works via the otter-os2 issues tracker at github.

I have collected some funding from a few loyal sponsors to get the development going again. But we will need more funding to fully stabilize the browser.

Testing indicates that the Otter Browser can access a number of websites that can no longer be accessed with the available Firefox and Seamonkey builds for OS/2 and ArcaOS.

Current expectation is that we will need 1 to 2 months to stabilize the browser so that it is stable enough to release to community.  This is an estimate based on the known issues.   We will have better estimates once debugging resumes.

Development Assistance

I would like to thank everybody who has donated to make the Otter Browser reality. However I would also like to thank Steven Levine for his assistance with providing me and Dmitriy with his advise (Steven is BTW not paid for this work). Steven works for example on the Open Watcom compiler for OS/2 and helps other people to analyze complex OS/2 issues. I have worked with Steven now for close to 20 years. Steven has over 50 years experience in the ICT sector.

People have asked why the development browser has taken so long. Here is his viewpoint on how the development of Qt 5.15 and the new Otter Browser has gone so far:

"Like everyone else, I would have liked for the Otter browser to be available sooner.  However, the Qt5 and Otter browser ports have basically been a one man project, with help other bww bitwise works employees and from the community.  What Dmitriy is doing is porting two large, complex projects that were never designed to run on a 32-bit platform and were never designed to run on OS/2.  IMO, there are few developers that could have accomplished what he has done in the same timeframe.    From what I can see, the browser is close to being usable on a daily basis.  There are already a number of sites, that matter to me, that I can now access with Otter, rather than having to work on another platform."

Dmitriy Kuminov has some comments on the size of the project.

"I would also mention here that Chromium, the web engine used by Otter which is a part of Qt5, contains around 75,000 C++ source files and around 35 million lines of source code.  Then there is the rest of Qt5 which is comparable in size."
The good news is that a lot of this code builds without modifications on OS/2.  The rest needs to be adapted and this takes time to get right.

Need for more sponsorship

Please consider making a contribution on our donation page
https://donation.os2voice.org.

Please note currently credit cards are not accepted. Paypal has stopped offering this service in the Netherlands.

Access to the Otter Browser when it's released for public usage

The current plan is that once the Otter Browser is sufficiently stable, it will be released in two versions - a Donation version and a Public version.

The Public version of the browser will display a nag screen on startup and for each tab you open, requesting that you consider making a donation and upgrading to the Donation version.  The Donation version will have no nag screen or other limitations.

Updates to the Donation version will be accessible when they are released by bww bitwise works.  Updates to the Public version may be delayed, depending on available resources.

Until such time as the Donation version of the browser is considered sufficiently stable, the browser will be released as a Preview version.  The first available Preview version will include a variant of the nag screen and it will be set to stop working on May 31, 2022.  Updated versions of the Preview version may change the timeout date. It is expected that this Preview version will be released the general public the in last week of February of the first week of March.

Bug reports will be accepted for the Preview, Donation or Public version until the Donation version is considered sufficiently stable.

Once the Donation version is considered sufficiently stable, bug reports will only be accepted for the Donation version.  This is similar to how bug reporting is handled for other bww bitwise work's ports, such as Apache Open Office.

The Otter Browser port and Qt5 are Open Source projects.  The source code will be publicly available under the terms of the applicable licenses.  The donation pays for access to the Donation version binary or any other available versions of the binary.  The donation funds bww bitwise works continued support of the port.

The donation amount determines how long access will be available.

The current plan is that a 30 Euro donation will provide 12 months of access. This is subject to change.  The goal is for the donations to provide sufficient funding for ongoing development and support.

People who have donated in the past will get immediate access to any available version.   Since the donation amounts have varied, a table will be published indicating how long a given donation will provide access.

Future enhancements to the browser

Currently bww bitwise works is working on porting and enhancing webcam support libraries.  Once these libraries are available and working, if sufficient funding available, it's possible that OS/2 users might get to to use some of the popular web meeting services with audio and video.

Acknowledgements

This text has been written in cooperation with Dmitriy Kuminov from bww bitwise works and Steven Levine.
If you have any questions please send email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

1. How often are you still able to use OS/2 or ArcaOS to visit websites with your web browser ?

• In all cases I can use OS/2 or ArcaOS to visit the websites I normally visit.
  Votes: 0%
• I can only visit a few websites on OS/2 or ArcaOS with my web browser.
  Votes: 0%
• For some websites I need to use another operating system or a device (such as tablet or mobile) to visit a website that does not work on ArcaOS or OS/2.
  Votes: 0%
• I have been forced to stop using ArcaOS or OS/2 to visit websites because the browser does not meet my needs.
  Votes: 0%

Total Votes:
First Vote:
Last Vote:

February 13, 2022February 14, 2022February 15, 2022February 16, 2022February 17, 2022February 18, 2022February 19, 2022February 20, 2022February 21, 2022February 22, 2022February 23, 2022February 24, 2022February 25, 2022February 26, 2022February 27, 2022February 28, 2022March 1, 2022March 2, 2022March 3, 2022March 4, 2022March 5, 2022March 6, 2022March 7, 2022March 8, 2022March 9, 2022March 10, 2022March 11, 2022March 12, 2022March 13, 2022March 14, 2022March 15, 2022March 16, 2022March 17, 2022March 18, 2022March 19, 2022March 20, 2022March 21, 2022March 22, 2022March 23, 2022March 24, 2022February 13, 2022February 14, 2022February 15, 2022February 16, 2022February 17, 2022February 18, 2022February 19, 2022February 20, 2022February 21, 2022February 22, 2022February 23, 2022February 24, 2022February 25, 2022February 26, 2022February 27, 2022February 28, 2022March 1, 2022March 2, 2022March 3, 2022March 4, 2022March 5, 2022March 6, 2022March 7, 2022March 8, 2022March 9, 2022March 10, 2022March 11, 2022March 12, 2022March 13, 2022March 14, 2022March 15, 2022March 16, 2022March 17, 2022March 18, 2022March 19, 2022March 20, 2022March 21, 2022March 22, 2022March 23, 2022March 24, 2022

What web browser are you using on OS/2 or ArcaOS ?

• Another Browser
  Votes: 0%
• Firefox 10
  Votes: 0%
• Firefox 38.8
  Votes: 0%
• Firefox 45.9
  Votes: 0%
• Seamonkey 2.42
  Votes: 0%

Total Votes:
First Vote:
Last Vote:

28February 13, 2022February 14, 2022February 15, 2022February 16, 2022February 17, 2022February 18, 2022February 19, 2022February 20, 2022February 21, 2022February 22, 2022February 23, 2022February 24, 2022February 25, 2022February 26, 2022February 27, 2022February 28, 2022March 1, 2022March 2, 2022March 3, 2022March 4, 2022March 5, 2022March 6, 2022March 7, 2022March 8, 2022March 9, 2022March 10, 2022March 11, 2022March 12, 2022March 13, 2022March 14, 2022March 15, 2022March 16, 2022March 17, 2022March 18, 2022March 19, 2022March 20, 2022March 21, 2022March 22, 2022March 23, 2022March 24, 2022February 13, 2022February 14, 2022February 15, 2022February 16, 2022February 17, 2022February 18, 2022February 19, 2022February 20, 2022February 21, 2022February 22, 2022February 23, 2022February 24, 2022February 25, 2022February 26, 2022February 27, 2022February 28, 2022March 1, 2022March 2, 2022March 3, 2022March 4, 2022March 5, 2022March 6, 2022March 7, 2022March 8, 2022March 9, 2022March 10, 2022March 11, 2022March 12, 2022March 13, 2022March 14, 2022March 15, 2022March 16, 2022March 17, 2022March 18, 2022March 19, 2022March 20, 2022March 21, 2022March 22, 2022March 23, 2022March 24, 2022

The status of the new QtWebEngine/Chromium based browser, update 12...

Details

Written by Roderick Klein

Category: VOICE

Published: 07 August 2020

Bitwise works GmbH ( "Bitwise") and the Dutch OS/2 VOICE foundation decided in October 2017 that OS/2 and ArcaOS needed a new web browser. Bitwise already ports and maintains a lot of open source projects; by now they maintain more than 260 DLLs which are used to compile and run open source applications on OS/2 and ArcaOS.

This screenshot is from the 27st of July 2020 from BWW developer Dmitry on his development system:

While this is not the targeted Falkon web browser yet, what this screenshot shows is that the QtWebEngine DLL is loaded by a Qt Web Browser demo application. The new QtWebEngine DLL that the Falkon browser will be using can be found here: http://rpm.netlabs.org/test/Qt5WebCd.7z , unzipped its 350 MB big!

So the DLL is not displaying data via the browser yet. The primary reason this is not yet working is unforseen issues with the toolchain on OS/2.  Our tools are old. With this we mean the GCC compiler and the wlink.exe.  The following issues in 2020 so far had to be addressed to get this new QtWebEngine DLL compiled on OS/2/ArcaOS:

* Needed GCC 9.2.x compiler, QtWebEngine DLL needed the new GCC compiler features (this alone took about 2 months extra). 
* Significant updates to LIBCn DLL, wide character support needed to be added for example.
* More DLLs ported to OS/2/updated to get the QtWebEngine to compile (ffmpeg, icu, libxml, etc).
* Open Watcom Linker WL.EXE had to be updated (and more updates to follow).
* AOUT to OMF converter EMXOMF.EXE used to compile with GCC needed updates (more to follow).

Portions of our toolchain: The GCC compiler and the Open Watcom Linker have never been used on OS/2 for compiling such large DLLs (hundreds of megabytes). The QtWebEngine DLL on a high end system with an Intel i7 CPU and with an SSD takes 12 to 16 hours to compile. The project is huge but also it takes that long because the tool chain needs updating. Compiling the same code on MacBook with a similar CPU takes about 4 hours, updates tools.

Paul Smedley had provided a base line of patches for GCC and Dmitry has expanded and improved these further. Currently Steve Levine is working on updating the WLINK from Open Watcom and other portions of the toolchain to speedup compiling.

As was explained in the Warpstock Europe 2020 presentation done by Dmitry and me (Roderick). Compiling programs on OS/2 is not plug and play like it is on other platforms. The video can be found here, goto 4 hours and 25 minutes, the  BWW presentation starts at this porint.

Once the QtWebEngine DLL is working and displaying the rendered data the new browser will not take long. The reason for this is because the vast mayority of the code of the browser uses is in the Qt DLLs and the QtWebEngine DLL.

These updated tools will now make maitenance of OS/2 ports easier in the future.  But with webkit working we will get access to new applications such as possibly the Teletegram Desktop application and possibly adding webcam video call support to OS/2. And a new mail client long term! But for now we expect Thunderbird to remain functional enough on ArcaOS.  Once we are current with QT we want to stay current also with porting new versions of QT and the QtWebEngine DLL.

Anothe reason this taking so long is because QT had not been worked on on OS/2 for a couple of years! It has taken a lot of work to catch up on the backlog! One projects that proves *if* you keep your port current is the Open Office project!  We as a community can keep our browser then current in the future!

We however need your donations to move forward with this big task!
 * Buy sponsor units through the OS/2 VOICE Foundation at
   http://www.os2voice.org/membership.html#bww; all proceeding of these
   units will go towards the browser project.
* Support BWW directly on a monthly basis via Patreon:

   https://www.patreon.com/bwwbitwiseworks.

We are also selling some unqiue OS/2 items on ebay. Alle money from these sales will be donated to the new browser project. More items will be added tomorow so keep on on this ebay link!

Thank you,

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE foundation

VOICE / Bitwise works new browser update 11

Details

Written by Roderick Klein

Category: Software

Published: 01 March 2020

An update on the current status of the QT development:

1. All parts of the QTWebEngine are finished, including the QT integration
with the Chromium engine. The code can be compiled when Chromium, where is
depends on, is finished.

2. All of the build tools required to build Chromium have been ported to
OS/2 and are working.

3. Chromium itself is now being worked on, which is about 50k of source
code files. To get this to compile also requires fixes and additions to
dependencies like LIBC

There has been good progress on the project, nevertheless there is still a
lot of work to be done. The current estimate is it will take about 2
months to get QT including all the web parts compiled and then some more
time to do bugfixing.

We still need funding to get this done. The VOICE coffers are almost
empty....

Click on the link below and scroll down to find the QT sponsoring options.

http://www.os2voice.org/membership.html

Best regards,

Roderick Klein

President OS/2 VOICE foundation

VOICE / Bitwise works new browser update 10

Details

Written by Roderick Klein

Category: Software

Published: 25 December 2019

It has been a while since the last update regarding the new web browser being developed for OS/2 and ArcaOS. For those people reading about this for the first time, here is a short summary.

BitWise Works GmbH (hereafter refered to as "BWW") and the Dutch OS/2 VOICE foundation decided in October 2017 that OS/2 and ArcaOS needed a web browser. BWW already ports and maintains a lot of open source projects; by now they maintain more then 260 DLL's which are used to compile and run open source applications on OS/2 and ArcaOS.

A lot of these DLLs have been ported to our operating system solely to keep the Firefox web browser running on OS/2 and ArcaOS. In fact, the last few years BWW has only been able to work on the Firefox browser and not much else. The main reason is that the Mozilla foundation kept making massive changes to the Mozilla products and it was difficult to keep up with them. In addition, in 2017 Mozilla switched to the RUST compiler to build Firefox; we do not have this compiler on OS/2 and it will most likely never exist on our platform.

For this reason the project was started to update the Qt framework on OS/2 and ArcaOS. Qt is a C++ framework that is used to create desktop programs, like an email client, an editor, a video player or a browser. Qt makes it easy to build applications on different platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux and of course OS/2. However, Qt itselfs needs to be ported to OS/2 first, and that is what BWW has been working on for the past 2 years. Currently we have version 5.13 available for OS/2 and ArcaOS (available through the Arca Noae Package Manager).

We need Qt 5 on OS/2 because of one component of the framework: Qt WebEngine. This large DLL contains the core code of any modern webbrowser and is essentially the same engine as used by open source Chromium, Google's Chrome and Microsoft's Edge webbrowser (no, this does not mean the Qt WebEngine sends data to Google or Microsoft; it is an open source project that does not have any vendor backdoors). We will use Qt WebEngine to bring the Falkon browser to OS/2.

An added bonus is that the Qt libraries also enables other developers to port more software to OS/2. For example, Gregg Young from the US uses Qt (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ75OV6iz0Y); Elbert Pol from the Netherlands also tests Qt and ports applictions to OS/2 and ArcaOS. However, a large project such as porting Qt cannot be done by volonteers alone; this needs paid developers, such as Dmitry Kuminov from BWW.

We had hoped that the Falkon browser for ArcaOS and OS/2 would be released in December of this year. Unfortunaly, we had some setbacks. In previous postings I explained how complex it can be to port software to OS/2 and ArcaOS; it is not just a matter of compiling the code on OS/2. In some cases new DLLs need to be ported to our platform or updated. This in turn required an upgrade of the available GCC compiler (the program that turns human readable code into machine language) from 4.9.2 to 9.2. BWW also ported this version to our operating system as it was needed for the Webkit DLL. So as an added bonus we have the latest GCC compiler for OS/2 as well. It is expected to take another 1 to 2 months before a beta of the Falkon browser can be released to the public.
(Edit 29th of December 2019: I forgot to mention the orginal ports of GCC are provided by Paul Smedley. BWW reported they tweaked some of the patches and recompiled GCC and tested it).

You should consider Seamonkey and Firefox technically dead on OS/2. More and more websites use the latest HTML techniques and have stopped working or will stop working on OS/2 and ArcaOS. You may already experience websites now that are broken or do not display at all, weird SSL error messages, et cetera.

We need the OS/2 community to contribute to this project. BWW is company based in Austria; only the main developer Dmitry is currently being paid. Silvan Scherrer and Herwig Bauernfeind work free of charge for the company and even put in extra money so Dmitry can work on the project full-time. That is why we need your continued support for this updated browser. It has been a long journey but soon you can use your favorite operating system again with a browser that will work a lot better simply because it is up to date.

While you may not understand all the technicall details you can visit the following page to see how many DLL's are being kept up to date by BWW here: https://www.bitwiseworks.com/news/

You can support this important project in two ways:

 * Buy sponsor units through the OS/2 VOICE Foundation at
   http://www.os2voice.org/membership.html#bww; all proceeding of these
   units will go towards the browser project.
 * Support BWW directly on a monthly basis via Patreon:
   https://www.patreon.com/bwwbitwiseworks.

On behalf of the OS/2 VOICE board and BWW we would like to wish everybody a healthy and great 2020!


Roderick Klein

President OS/2 VOICE foundation