Does it make sence ? http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=93606 @jonwill btw it can be an option as it would be upto date maps for long

Are you sure it's the html part that's "talking" to gecko? The term "npatlas.so" sounds a little bit more... low-level... then that

One could also write a shim to get the older plugin to talk to a newer Gecko version that broke ABI support, might be easier than REing the plugin if it's a big one (I have no idea, not looked into it)

Well... no. But if it's a library, maybe LD_PRELOAD would do the trick.

Last time I used it, Maps did "Downloading Data..". whatever that means. But checking now and visiting an area I have never been before (USA) it doesn't seem to want to pull maps for it.
If a "Here Maps" client is possible (or anything else that has offline map caching in a way that''s as easy to use as Nokia Maps) then yes that is an answer.
And yes you could write a shim. The hardest part is reverse engineering all these libraries (libatlas.so, libmessagebus.so, npatlas.so, npatalsurlresolver.so and npmessagebus.so) and finding exactly which Gecko interfaces they use and if those interfaces need translating.

If we get to the point that it really (I mean really really really really really) has to be done, maybe giving some love to improve other piece of navigation software would be better choice whatsoever...? What I mean is Nokia Maps seem to be pretty incomplete (feature-wise: not offline really, etc.) and more and more stuff will stop working with time as they discontinue their services... I remember the Nokia Maps from PR 1.0, and it basically seemed like an online map viewer for me (no real turn-by-turn, no voice, etc.). Software like e.g. Mappero worked way better in my oppinion (btw, I still have it on my N900).

Don't get me wrong jonwil, I don't want to either discourage or lessen your efforts, but even from post #69 in this thread I feel you also consider dropping Nokia Maps alltogether as an option.

Either way, it is up to you, but if you ask me, I don't feel like e.g. Modrana is a proper replacement. Not that it seems to be slow sometimes and freeze some N900s to death (including mine, but in Modrana thread others reported similar issues), but doing so feels basically like replacing notepad.exe with Apache OpenOffice Writer in Windows (Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't used Nokia Maps since I tried the initial unofficial pathes from TMO that allowed turn-by-turn voice navigation via espeak and for me Nokia Maps still look like an online map viewer with some online routing service - which a simple OpenStreetMap API client written with geolocation plugin, OpenLayers and maybe a N900-local simple proxy-with-tile-catching server/script).

After 10 minutes (not really an edit as I haven't really published the post yet ) - ok, I opened Nokia Maps after maybe years of not seeing them. It doesn't look like megabytes of compiled ARM code... Am I missing some crucial functionality that I don't see in my GUI somehow? I have a boring class on my uni tomorrow, I will try to scratch something similar on my netbook (in order to stop being just a smartass ).

1 to dich nokia maps as more and more stuff wotld stop working.
What dosent work ?
Map downloads
Syncng poi
One cannot even log in
Updating maps
Not to mention they are crutial functionablity afaik maps were more usable after that ovi voice guidance and 3d mode hack and maps on n900 are not even comparable to nokia maps 2.0 and a maps without up to date data is useless of course also i use the maps just because it got better data
In that regard having a better browser as great as microb) is way better and later a default map client can be thought or maybe current ovi made to work or something like this http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=93606

I am giving up any thoughts on trying to get the existing microb modules (maps, ssoautologin) working on newer Gecko (even with wrapper libs). Too much has changed (e.g. removal of nsIProxyObjectManager to name one thing I have seen) and possibly also even the basic ABI of XPCOM has changed.

So basically the way forward for adobe-flashplayer, tablet-browser-default-plugin and tablet-browser-mediaplayer-plugin is to restore the NPAPI function linked to previously somehow. For libssoautologin, we need to figure out what it does and if we need it, clone it (its probably possible to clone it), And for maps, we need to A.Clone it completly, B.Clone it partially (i.e. clone it but pull the old stock lib file in as a shared library to grab code we cant clone), C.Find a way to keep old Gecko (or a rebuilt/modified version of old Gecko) around just for maps or D.Forget Nokia Maps and replace it.

In terms of a replacement what I want from a maps client is offline map downloading (not just caching but proper "download everything for this area over this high-speed DSL link and only download new stuff if its changed" ala Nokia Maps) without needing to manually input specific coordinates/sizes for the map (I want it to know what "Australia" or "Brisbane" is and download it for me, just like Nokia Maps does). Google Transit GTFS data set support would be awesome (i.e. being able to display bus stops etc on the map and see all the services going from those stops and when) as would a nice sane address/location/poi search. Don't need turn-by-turn or voice navigation since I dont drive a car

If such a maping program exists (or can be made), it would mean I could get rid of Nokia Maps for good.

One idea that I had was to reverse engineer the file formats of the Nokia Maps map files...

Certainly a lot easier than reverse engineering the whole plugin.

Adding to my previous post: I forgot about system integration... Contacts application is communicating with Nokia Maps... But that seems to use dbus, so should not be that hard to do... Any other stock application can talk/listen to Nokia Maps somehow?