[eclipxe]

You can render HTML content with a custom rendering engine - for example ePub ebooks are essentially bundled HTML + CSS content - there are several HTML rendering engines that read ePub ebooks but don't use Webkit.

Also, you can build a UI using web languages and render to native controls, all without using WebKit if you'd like.

[bzbarsky]

Right, rendering HTML is fine. As long as you don't download it from the internet on-demand, or so.