[Linux-aus] Pidgin WebRTC (was Re: NBN discussion)

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 8:43 AM, Peter Lawler <linux-aus at bleeter.id.au> wrote:
> On 03/07/13 08:03, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>
>> Anyway: WebKit is not what you want: you want blink - Google's web
>> engine - which has WebRTC support. Or if you are only interested in
>> the WebRTC part of blink, you should just use the webrtc code stack
>> https://code.google.com/p/webrtc/ , which is also what Firefox uses.
>
>
> I'm not too sure about the blink/webkit reasoning, except WebKit was chosen
> well before blink was announced.

Are you using WebKit as a rendering engine for HTML or for WebRTC
support? I'm sure it's the earlier because it doesn't do the latter.

> But at a guess, the C++ requirement I
> suspect blink needs (based upon observation of RHEL6 Chrome being ditched)
> would mean a bump in gcc requirements for Pidgin which is a C program. Not
> 100% sure how that'd 'go down' and how much it'd break other code.

WebKit and blink are not that different from each other, in particular
since blink is a fork from WebKit. The webrtc code is certainly more
interesting and much less heavy. It's based on the original code from
GIPS, which was the media engine of choice for many video and VoIP
apps.

> However, as Eion Robb corrected me, WebRTC is available in GStreamer which
> Pidgin already supports.

Makes sense.

> So it shouldn't be that tricky (as in, not as hard
> as REing a closed protocol) and less likely break other code if/when bumping
> gcc version. Which, I guess is to say, the path of least resistance would be
> GStreamer first.

Sure. I just wanted to make sure the understanding of WebKit in this
context was correct.

Silvia.