QtWebEngine often has critical security vulnerabilities and slow to fix them. Can Digikam do without (perhaps absent some features)?
You want mean QtWebKit, not QtWebEngine. The last one is the official web render supported by Qt team. It's a Qt wrapper for Chromium engine. QtWebKit is an old one, no more supported by Qt team. This is optional to switch from QtWebEngine to QtWebkit and vis versa, through a Cmake option: https://invent.kde.org/graphics/digikam/-/blob/master/core/CMakeLists.txt#L36 Gilles Caulier
No, QtWebKit seems to be even less maintained... I mean without any Javascript/HTML engine at all.
the qtwebengine V8 javascript engine is a core component of this Qt framework: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-3rdparty-v8-javascript-engine.html We don't have any control on it... Report this problem to your Linux team or Qt team. Gilles Caulier
The ask is to not use QtWebEngine (nor QtWebKit) at all...
Disabling QtWebEngine or QtWebkit dependency is not possible has it used at too many places. Gilles Caulier