A Perl Web Browser Plugin

[zentara]

Hi, this idea keeps going through my mind as something desirable.

Java has a plug_in to run it's code in Browsers, and I was wondering what the impediments were to making a Perl plugin (and of course graphics with Tk, and Gtk2).

So I'm just looking for brainstorming about this. There is Java and the java_plugin. They are not the same. What are the differences needed in the language to make it safe to run as a browser plug-in? You obviously need to remove access to the local filesystem, but what other considerations would be needed? Can Perl be chopped down, to be safe to run as a browser plug-in? Or is there something about Perl which makes it unsuitable as a browser-plug-in?

[wazoox]

It certainly can be chopped down to make it a suitable browser plugin, because it was actually done : PerlScript is available for years, on IE only alas.

[gjb]

The Java plugin doesn't just prohibit access to the local file system, the standard library has a very sophisticated mechanism of permissions in the java.security.* package. This allows for very fine-grained permissions that can be set via properties. I've actually used the latter to run students' code on my machine ;) This all goes down into the JVM which is aware of these permissions.

To make a Perl plugin would probably mean a lot of work to build a perl interpreter that would support some kind of nontrivial security model.

Just my 2 cents, -gjb-

[Anonymous Monk]

Safe::World?

[Courage]

It was discussed recently on p5p list, how unsafe Safe.pm is... unfortunately.

[randyk]

The Penguin project is an effort towards enabling Perl code to be transferred and executed over a network. I'm not sure how far along that's been developed.

Although more of a helper application rather than a plugin, I've worked on PAR-WebStart, which is a Perl implementation of Java's WebStart using PAR distributions. This doesn't have the security features of Java (save for a digital verification of the integrity of the transfer done via Module::Signature), but it does illustrate one way to launch perl applications through a browser.

[zentara]

The Penguin Project article was interesting, and seemed to be heading in the right direction. Is it still active anywhere? Googling for it turns up alot of non-releated Penguin projects. :-)

All I really want is to be able to run Tk or Gtk2 apps in a browser window, displaying network graphics and maybe a few buttons and animations. Essentially I want a free "Flash" replacement. :-)

[SamCG]

Note that this is a slight different from a Perl plug-in (and may not apply in your case), but since you say you essentially want a free Flash replacement, it's worth it to note that you can create Flash with Perl. It is a bit more cumbersome than using Tk, though.

[choedebeck]

I seem to remember reading about the perl plus plugin that would allow you to run Tk Applications over a browser. I believe you can find it here

[zentara]

Yeah, I've played with that PerlPlusPlugin, but it's almost useless because of the security problems, since it is a wrapper around the "real Perl and Tk" in your system. Hence, my original question, about how would you go about making a chopped down Perl and Tk, which would be loaded as a real browser plugin, AND not using the system's Perl.