on 28/3/02 11:44 PM, Matt Denton at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> The plug-in API is published, so it is certainly possible to do - would >> be >> much better done within the engine though. > > Hey Ben, not sure what you mean here, do you mean somehow play Flash > directly, without using the plug-in? I guess QTime is played from
No, I meant it would be better for the engine to host browser plug-ins, rather than > I wonder how hard it would be to get an XCMD or XOBJ or DLL to read a > web-browser plug-in? Because of the facilities that the plug-in API (at least the original embed one, I'm not familiar with the ActiveX) provides for a plug-in to call back to the host (browser), it would be much more functional if the hosting support was built into the MetaCard engine, rather than into an XCMD which has a limited integration with Rev/MC. > That to me sounds like a great idea, as I'm sure there are overhead and > compatibility issues with the plug-in path. Would that mean licensing issues? There are two ways to go: Macromedia have published the format, so one can write one's own player (or authoring system) from scratch, with no licensing issues - but I wouldn't recommend it! Alternately you can license the player code from Macromedia - I know nothing about what terms they offer. This would be more plausible; but my vote would be to put the effort into creating the general mechanism to support browser plug-ins, rather than specifically integrating the Flash player. (Or if Scott and the team do want to write original code, SVG support...) Anyway, that's what I meant: better to have plug-in support in the engine not an XCMD. > Sounds like it was well worth it, and possibly fun too. Out of > interest, how long did the play-plug-in it take from start to finish? Hard to tell exactly, but I've just gone back and checked my time report. In 1996, I seem to have recorded 36 hours on this before reporting that it was working for 68K plug-ins on the 68K version of my engine; and a total of 57 hours when I wrapped it up with the 68K and PPC support in 68K and PPC engines, tested on some plug-ins. Scarily however I then find that I spent some 40 hours in 1998 getting the molecular model viewer plug-in working on Mac and Windows engines (and I'm pretty certain that a colleague had already implemented basic plug-in support on Windows before that). I think this was partly because there were some nasty bombing issues, but it's still more than I'd remembered. But then again, a better programmer might be much faster (that's not false modesty - I was operating close to the edge of my depth, especially on Windows). Ben Rubinstein | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600 http://www.cogapp.com | Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866 _______________________________________________ improve-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/improve-revolution
