Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC digital curriculum service in England

[Lee Braiden]

On Thursday 14 Oct 2004 07:37, Phil Driscoll wrote:
> We now have SVG renderers embedded into some of our desktop environments,
> so it is clear that the SVG libraries must be up to a standard where the
> Mozilla and KHTML people ought to be able to start thinking about using
> them.

Mozilla, at least, already has an SVG engine.  It's just not included in the 
main tree for some reason.  This might actually be the best of all SVG 
supporters, since I think the plugins from the likes of Adobe aren't as 
scriptable as a directly included renderer.

> If we had browsers that could do this stuff, then we would need someone to
> do a flash -> SVG+javascript+SMIL converter and we wouldn't need flash
> players any more.

I'm thinking along similar lines on this.  If Flash4Linux worked for 
development, for importing flash, and could output scripted SVG rather 
than .SWF, it would be a huge thing.  I wonder how much work presentation 
apps like OpenOffice would need to fully support keyframe-based animation, 
etc.  It might make a lot of sense to simply add exporters and things to 
OpenOffice Presenter.

Another thought I had is that .SWF is basically a compiled binary format.  
Flash itself (rather than the player) uses project files with more details -- 
'source code', if you will.  If that format is better understood or more 
parseable, it might make more sense to write a simple command-line 
translation tool, or a plugin for Flash itself, which renders SVG?  A library 
that loads Flash's native format into a data model similar to what linux 
flash libraries use for rendering would be a big step, too.

> We would also need to make sure that the system is obviously better than
> Flash even for users who don't care about the technology or freedom, so
> that it has a chance of replacing the entrenched proprietary technology.

Yes, and it would have to fully support all the (non-obsolete) features of 
Flash now.  Accessibility and documentation often lag behind, for example.  I 
think it would be best if the project could overcome rivalries about which 
desktop media libraries to use etc., too :/

> In the short term, I think it would be hard to do much without further
> encouraging the use of Flash. The only current multi-platform alternative
> which can match the functionality is Java, but to implement the interactive
> stuff in Java would greatly increase the BBC's authoring costs.

Perhaps a good first step would be to create a library which supports 
keyframe-based animation and the other basic building blocks of vector 
animation formats.  It could be done simply, in Javascript for SVG, or 
perhaps as an automatically installable plugin for all browsers, that 
Javascript can access (not sure if that's ideal).  Along with many demos to 
show it off, and tutorials on how to use it, it could be a big step in 
demonstrating equivalent (or better) potential of open solutions, and in 
encouraging other tools like office presentation apps to output to it.

-- 
Lee Braiden