I understood that the native react serializes the ui "DOM" to some format and sends it to the native process. Will the native rendering engine be open source and/or will the protocol be open/specified ? This could be handy for embedded targets.
Yep, you've got the gist of it. We render the app in JS, React creates this view hierarchy (still in JS), this is serialized and sent over the bridge (asynchronously) to the native engine who then creates the equivalent native view hierarchy and renders it.
The source code for the iOS native engine (and the JS infra, and some examples) will be given to attendees of React.js Conf tomorrow (Jan 29). The iOS and Android versions of React Native will be open sourced soon! :)
Is this native engine still html based (eg blink engine or webkit) or is it using the platforms drawing engines? We are currently building user interfaces for STB platforms using a a js platform mapped to a native canvas running on v8. If we could use the react protocol it would be great.
