If I want to build a DOM in C, then I'll need a base Node type, probably an Element type, and a bunch of functions with names starting with dom_, node_, and element_.

Doesn't sound hard in principal...

typedef enum {
  NODE_ELEMENT,
  NODE_TEXT
} NodeType;

typedef struct node {
  struct node* Parent;
  struct node** Children;
} Node;

... except I'm not sure what it gets me.

I want to transform the stuff in the HTML5 spec into something machine readable, so I can parse HTML and then render it.

I keep going round on this, I've got a range of languages available and they've all got advantages and disadvantages. It would probably help me to have a clearer picture of what I want, but that (at least partly) depends on what language I'm thinking in at the time.

C# has got cross platform support (except it can't do GUI on Linux), it's got three really good IDEs (two owned by Microsoft, one with a licensing fee) that make it really smooth to write, but it's big (a carefully engineered "hello world" can get down to maybe 30Mb) and poor to zero JavaScript support.

C has poor Windows support, OK IDE (which will improve once I've learned ctags for vim), good JavaScript support (hello QuickJS), but it's a bit painful to write. I'd need to find/choose a GUI library (or two, one for Linux and WinForms for Windows), and either pick s library or write my own networking code.

I've got two options for "interpreted code on C", JavaScript (via QuickJS), or Loxish (based on Crafting Interpreters). They've both got the same "need to wrap libraries/write low level code" that C does, but with the option of working in a higher level language. The more code I write in the interpreted language the slower the app, but that's balanced against less C work (e.g., exposing low level read()/write() network primatives Vs a fetch() method).

Of the two, it will be easier to get help for JavaScript, but it will be easier to mould Loxish into what I want. I'll need to pull QuickJS in as a dependency either way, but it's not nearly so heavy (and much easier to isolate) if I'm only using it for document scripting.

I think I want to use C+Loxish for the control and the "I built it"-ness, but I'm scared of how much work I'm looking at.

But circling back to the start, I'm going to need to write the HTML parser in something, sooner or later. (Ah-ha! Something in my head just said 'but if I write it in C#, it's easier to reuse '.)