Hi Dan, I'm using swfmill since around a year now, and I'm using it for two projects. One that I do for university is nearly finished, and it's nice to see how great the tools MTASC and swfmill work together. The biggest job is done by MTASC here (I'm not using any complex functions of swfmill right now, but big ActionScript 2.0 files), but as I need some complex movie clips from other *.swf Files (which do only work since 0.2.11.15 or so) I'm fixed to use the latest prereleases.
The project does work with 0.2.11.22 as it should, no problems here. Finally, because I have a valid Flash MX license (yes, I really spent money on it), I could create some *.swf files containing complex movie clips and test if they can be imported by swfmill. > [...] > So. I learned a lesson: Dont do open-source for the money. It took me a long time to create a senseful connection between open source and money. The question I constantly asked myself was: "How can projects like Apache, Linux, Mozilla etc. can be so much better than proprietary products? The companies spent much more money on proprietary products, so how can this be?" The final answer I found a few months ago was that my question was wrong: The big open source projects earn much more money than proprietary ones - the only difference here is that _many_ companies (and private persons) spend a small amount of money and working time (which is money!) on open source projects. Overall there is more money spent on big open source projects. The conclusion is: Open Source projects work well if there is a big community to support them. That means that swfmill has to be used more often in order to earn more money with it. I don't think that there will be many donations more, but at least if swfmill is used more often companies will realise that they need additional functions, and they need a person that will implement those functions for them. And who is better on swfmill: Is it a programmer that has to spend much time to learn how swfmill works until he can modify it, or is it you, Dan? ;) That's how open source and money work together. > * test the latest prerelease (0.2.11.22), and *report if it works*. As the > useOutlines issue showed, my fear of introducing regressions is not > completely psychological. I want to see at least about 5 reports of "i use > swfmill in this-or-that-context, and 0.2.11.22 works flawless" before finally > going 0.2.12. If you want to help more, start organizing the construction of > an extended set of simple test cases for automatic regression tests. As I wrote above, 0.2.11.22 works fine here. > * swfmill needs documentation. there is a lot floating around, but it needs > a loving hand of collecting and organizing it into something like a manual. > Please, someone, step forward and take on this issue. It could be one weekend > of work, but would make an incredible difference and you could be certain of > the thanks of many a newbie. I'm interested in it, but right now I have to work hard in university. What would be the best method for the documentation? A HTML page? I would appreciate that one. :) > when and if swfmill gets a release and some better docs, it is back on the > road to being a stable tool. is that in your interest? Yes, of course. Or what did you expect? ;) I won't wait for the documentation to be done before the release of 0.2.12 - just release it, the documentation will be done afterwards. I'm really interested in the idea of Brian who noticed that an IDE would be useful. As you wrote, swfmill is really stable now - why not creating an IDE (e.g. written in Java, which will be open-sourced in a few weeks) that uses MTASC for ActionScript code and swfmill to glue all together? I'm thinking of an IDE that looks like the official IDE by Adobe. That would have many advantages: - There is an IDE for users who don't like commandline tools - The community is getting bigger (bigger community => more money) - The development of swfmill and MTASC continues, as they are a requirement for the IDE I'm not the one to start this IDE because I have some other projects which are waiting to be developed for a long time, but IMHO it's a great idea. Regards Marc Reichelt || http://www.marcreichelt.de/ PS: Sorry for the long mail and wasting your time. ;) _______________________________________________ swfmill mailing list swfmill@osflash.org http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/swfmill_osflash.org
