Perl and Flash MX2004

From the Peanut Gallery

To my way of thinking:

1. Absorbing other systems and using them as a servent is one of the major attributes of Perl.
2. A significant weakness of Perl is that it does not support audio and video to the normal level of Perl excellence.
3. Part of what makes Perl so strong, is that so many problems can be reduced to simple data types.
4. Flash ActionScript has many weaknesses. A great strength is that it simplifies audio and video by giving the programmer simple data types to do symbol manipulations with Audio and Video data.
5. One could argue that wherever Perl is strong, Flash ActionScript is weak, and vise versa.

Previous efforts to support Flash files in Perl were crippled because before you can start you have to create a program to compile SWF files. By the time someone makes any progress, they need to get a paying job or are faced with a new version of Flash. But, with Flash MX 2004, this is no longer a problem. It is trivial to write a Perl script to automate the Flash tool to compile FLA files to SWF files. ( I can post code if people want ).

Likewise, with #include scripts, a Perl script can easily write a text file and have ActionScripts included in the SWF file. Therefore, the power of Perl to manage text can be brought to bear on ActionScripts. Seems a library of code generating tools could be written in Perl to make it easy to write certain ActionScripts, much as a person can now write HTML with Perl modules without bothering to learn all the HTML details.

I was wondering if anyone else thought that there was a need to add Flash ActionScripting capabilities to Perl, so that it was just another tool in the Perl toolbox??? Just curious, as I am not a programmer with great experience. Part of what got me thinking this was the Perl/Tk module, where Perl lifts a nice GUI from Tk, then puts a wrapper on it, so Perl users can get Tk goodness without learning TCL.

PS... Here is a rough draft of code to make the idea possibly clearer. If it is the broken version, let me know and I will post fixes.

http://HenryJamesFeltus.com/flash_djinni/flash_djinni.htm

Comment on Perl and Flash MX2004

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl and Flash MX2004 by Chady (Priest) on Dec 05, 2003 at 18:02 UTC
I use Flash a lot. I do all the animations where I work. I don't like this idea because you can't but include actionscript files in compile time, so all the time that I'm going to spend learning a certain API to generate actionscripts, I could write the actual script instead. I do use perl to generate lots of redundant actionscripts because I'm lazy. But until I can include actions on runtime -- something like perl's `eval` -- I don't see quite a big added value in this process. I think my main point is roughly like the point that people make about generating HTML with CGI.pm He who asks will be a fool for five minutes, but he who doesn't ask will remain a fool for life. Chady \| http://chady.net/	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Perl and Flash MX2004 by BUU (Prior) on Dec 06, 2003 at 00:58 UTC
Which is why people use HTML::Template.. (I have no idea where this metaphor is going!)	[reply]
Re: Perl and Flash MX2004 by hardburn (Abbot) on Dec 05, 2003 at 17:50 UTC
If this is your itch to scratch, then go ahead and do it. Personally, I don't like Flash, and could care less if Perl could access it or not. Then again, people write a lot of modules that I fundamently dislike (such as Inline::Java), and I don't particularly care as long as I don't have to maintain code that uses it. ---- I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident. -- Schemer `: () { :\|:& };:` Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Perl and Flash MX2004 by xenchu (Friar) on Dec 07, 2003 at 03:35 UTC
I am convinced that Larry Wall and the Merry Men who code Perl can do anything. That said it seems reasonable that a perlish version of Flash MX2004 be created. Some of the modules I have had contact with convince me that it might be hard but it wouldn't be impossible. xenchu **sigfilesigfilesigfilesigfilesigfilesigfilesigfilesigfile Perl has one Great Advantage and one Great Disadvantage: It is very easy to write a complex and powerful program in three lines of code. ****************************************** `The Needs of the World and my Talents run parallel to infinity.`	[reply] [d/l]