[IAEP] Flash at Sugar Labs

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 05.01.2009, at 05:24, John Watlington wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2009, at 9:23 PM, Wade Brainerd wrote:
>> Currently Sugar is incapable of running software which is not
>> specifically designed for it.
> Sugar runs simpler SWF applications just fine, through the Browser.
> They don't have to be "designed" for Sugar.


I think this goes besides the original point of Bryan. He is well  
aware that software needs to be specifically designed for Sugar, and  
wether this is good or bad is not the current debate. The point is  
what tools one can use to implement a proper Sugar activity. Bryan  
says the tools many content developers are familiar with are HTML,  
Javascript, and Flash.

So how could an activity look like that can be authored primarily  
using Adobe's Flash tools?

I think it would be relatively easy to come up with an activity  
template that just has a subdirectory for SWF content. Creating an SWF  
activity then would involve copying the template, editing the meta  
data, putting the SWF content into the directory, zipping it up and  
voila, a nice XO bundle. That process could easily be done by a  
script, even on Windows.

IMHO that activity should be a wrapper for Gnash, perhaps as a native  
GTK+ application, without the browser baggage (maybe such a stand- 
alone player does exist already?). Since the content is authored  
specifically for Sugar (and in Nepal's case even more specifically for  
Sugar on the OLPC XO-1) it can easily be tuned to work well in Gnash.  
Hopefully Gnash's current limitations are well documented so authors  
can avoid pitfalls. That "sugarized SWF player" could even be extended  
to integrate nicely with the Journal (being able to do that is the  
point of having a free implementation after all) - there is no need to  
be compatible with Adobe's Flash player.

My 1/50 € ...

- Bert -