Cassius VS serenity

FWIW, while there are unfortunately only very few attempts at formalizing CSS, there's at least an unofficial, unreviewed (?), partial formal semantics for (CSS 2-era) float layout based on z3 SMT and Racket you can take a look at to get a flavor, though it isn't receiving further development.

[1]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

[2]: https://pavpanchekha.com/blog/css-floats.html

Do we need W3C anymore? The HTML 5 specification has been created by WHATWG for many years now, with W3C only rubber-stamping historic WHATWG versions until 2017 or so. SVG2 is going nowhere, and so isn't MathML, leaving the CSS working group as W3C's remaining point of influence over the Web. CSS is regarded as so poor and overdone a specification that the only two external projects for a formal specification have failed or remained woefully incomplete (1, 2).

1. CSS should've been split into app-y styles and doc-y styles a looong time ago; meaning that when you need JavaScript to make use of a feature anyway, there's no point in using CSS and it's better to set styles, layout using JavaScript rather than bloat CSS. The Houdini API was on the right track years ago.

2. The CSS WG at W3C must deliver formal specification rather than the prose they're writing up now. For an idea how a (partial) formal spec for CSS rendering looks like, see eg. [1], [2] (with limitations).

The one way complexity that both W3C and WHATWG have delivered over the past 15 years with complete lack of mental discipline due to financial dependency/job security will be a major source of confusion for generations to cone, and will not be looked at favorably.

[1]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

[2]: https://github.com/lmeyerov/sc

There's this cool project using z3 (and racket) for formalizing CSS rendering [1] I never came around to lift for anything. Maybe someone else interested in leading the web out of the dark ages and give W3C's CSS WG an idea what we expect from them will.

[1]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

FWIW, I know two (partial, kinda) formal specifications of CSS normal flow and float layout, both of which are finished ie dead projects:

[1]: https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/paper....

[2]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

(not counting the 1990s constraint CSS effort).

The first was merely part of a parallel compiler project and also covers table layout, whereas the second is a Racket (Scheme) program to formulate the HTML doc and CSS rules as a theory for submitting to z3 SMT to solve all kinds of decision problems (it can also produce a rendering).

Not sure that's very helpful; it would be cool if W3C can invest some time into better specs (not just prose).

SerenityOS replicates that look and feel. It is also implemented in a dialect of C++ that adheres to some of the good parts of C++98: https://serenityos.org

One example of a useful technique

https://serenityos.org/ apparently only makes source code available. There are no binary images of the OS to install

I think Andreas said this functions like a little test -- if you're not willing to build it from source, then you probably wouldn't be a good contributor anyway.

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Likewise, my shell project provides source tarballs only, right now - https://www.oilshell.org/release/0.21.0/

It is packaged in a number of places, which I appreciate. That means some other people are willing to do some work.

And they provide good feedback.

I would like it to be more widely available, but yeah I definitely see that you need to "gate" peanut gallery feedback a bit, because it takes up a lot of time.

Of course, it's a tricky balance, because you also want feedback from casual users, to make the project better.

Indeed, given the existence of `JS::NonnullGCPtr`, `JS::GcPtr` intentionally corresponds to a nullable pointer, so it seems dangerous to convert one to a reference without a null-check.

That said, a naive code search finds what *may* be more cases of this pattern:

https://github.com/search?q=repo%3ASerenityOS%2Fserenity+%2F...

Eg: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/a68b134e6dea5065... -> https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/a68b134e6dea5065...

In some of those search results, it is fine because there is a preceding null-check, and obviously I know nothing about this code other than this naive search result, but perhaps it would be prudent to vet all of them.

It is a SerenityOS project. You can find the answer to that question in their primary project's FAQ[1].

1. https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Documenta...

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity

The best way to write proper exception free C++ is not to use the C++ Standard Library.

I initially confused it with Serenity OS prior to watching the video: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity

My contributions to SerenityOS[0] helped me get my current job. My team lead (who was also my interviewer) was interested in what I did since I listed some of it in my CV, and I showed him some PRs I made and explained what went into each of them. It was really exciting because I didn't have professional experience with low-level development, and basically got the job due to hobby programming.

[0]: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pulls?q=is%3Apr+autho...

Definitely not "literally impossible", just a great deal of work. https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Ladybird