But what about Flash? (Re: Toward the next release...)

Andreas Raab raab at isgnw.CS.Uni-Magdeburg.De
Wed Nov 4 12:19:31 UTC 1998


Mike,

> What about Flash?  There was a tantalizing hint in your msg before OOPSLA
> (which I missed again; sigh...) but nothing in your msg about the next
> release.  Or is that technology related to "Andreas Raab's
> as-yet-to-be-named resolution-independent outline-based anti-aliasing 2-D
> rendering engine"?  I dearly hope so.  It would be wonderful to get that
> technology into Squeak.

What I've been working on for the moment is a 2D vector graphics engine
(code name "Balloon") in Squeak. Thus, it will not include a lot of
editing capabilities for the moment. It will, however, open the door for
high-quality and (hopefully) high-speed rendering of vector graphics and
animations. In particular, I hope that we'll be able to use TrueType
vector fonts in Squeak directly. Part of the stuff that I've been doing is
writing a Flash file reader (e.g., the Open-SWF stuff) for Squeak so you
can have fun with it (and eventually integrate it into Lex' browser).

> Story for the uninitiated:
[...]
> 1. It used an innovative graph-theoretic data structure to represent the
> drawing elements. 

Do you know the name of this data structure?! From the description that
follows it sounds like some sort of constraint voronoi-diagrams have been
used.

> So now you know where Flash came from (if you ever wanted to know :-) and a
> little bit about why I'm excited to see the technology appear in Squeak.

Thanks for the very interesting explanation!

  Andreas
-- 
Linear algebra is your friend - Trigonometry is your enemy.
+===== Andreas Raab ============= (raab at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de) =====+
I Department of Simulation and Graphics      Phone: +49 391 671 8065  I
I University of Magdeburg, Germany           Fax:   +49 391 671 1164  I
+=============< http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~raab >=============+





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