...making Linux just a little more fun!
[ In reference to "HelpDex" in LG#135 ]
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 01:07:39PM -0500, saallan@wightman.ca wrote:
> I have read your article discussing swf and possible open-source readers and players. > My Debian Linux machine (a Mac Quadra running Sarge) is nowhere near adequate to > your suggestions. Is there a swf to jpeg converter that could run on my system? > Thanks - Larry in the Ontario deep woods.
Hi, Larry - I know it's taken a while to answer, but I've been tied up in a lot of other things, all while trying to find an answer - although it was for reasons different from yours, but a similar problem.
As far as I can tell, the solution for reading SWFs on older, slower machines is to use a viewer other than Adobe's; e.g., 'swf-player', or Gnash (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/), or one of the viewers listed at osFlash 'http://www.osflash.org/'. Have you tried any of those yet? I found that swf-player is pretty easy on the CPU and disk space both. Please let us know how it goes.
Coming at it from the other end, I'm using Ubuntu on a 64-bit AMD laptop - and as it happens, I have (well, had) the same problem from the other end: I couldn't view SWFs because there isn't yet a 64-bit Flash viewer for Linux. Well, some people - including GNU - are working on one, but... it's all very alpha and experimental and non-usable (at least by me.) So, after spending a bunch of time on this, I just dropped the whole idea of doing it in 64-bit and built a 32-bit chroot enviroment for those apps which haven't quite made the transition yet. Now, when I type "firefox32", it fires up the chroot, runs the 32-bit version of Firefox, and - voila - I've got Flash and all.
Now, if I could just find similarly easy fixes for my GL and WiFi, I'd be all set....
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
[ljmoore at wightman.ca]
>Hi, Larry - I know it's taken a while to answer, but I've been tied up >in a lot of other things, all while trying to find an answer - although >it was for reasons different from yours, but a similar problem. > >As far as I can tell, the solution for reading SWFs on older, slower >machines is to use a viewer other than Adobe's; e.g., 'swf-player', or >Gnash (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/), or one of the viewers listed >at osFlash 'http://www.osflash.org/'. Have you tried any of those yet? I >found that swf-player is pretty easy on the CPU and disk space both. >Please let us know how it goes. >Thanks for your attention and thought. No happy dance here yet.
swf-player installs as a Mozilla plugin (but Mozilla is on long list of programs that give n identical CORBA ORB error messages, and then abort on invocation.) Firefox just barely runs, here. A swf plugin for Dillo would be good.
osflash wants Intel, and gnash requires compilation from source with programs and libraries not ported to Debian Sarge. Debian Etch is not available on my architecture (m68k.) All other roads have dead ended.
I really think that a flash to jpeg converter is my route. Has the swf format tech/spec been released?
Thanks for your advice and help.
Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]
Hello,
On Mon, 09 Apr 2007, ljmoore@wightman.ca wrote:
> I really think that a flash to jpeg converter is my route. > Has the swf format tech/spec been released?
Have a look at libming-util. (I haven't used it myself yet but I plan to try it out!)
Regards,
Kapil. --
[ljmoore at wightman.ca]
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 08:35:11AM +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
> Hello, > > On Mon, 09 Apr 2007, ljmoore@wightman.ca wrote: > > I really think that a flash to jpeg converter is my route. > > Has the swf format tech/spec been released? > > Have a look at libming-util. (I haven't used it myself yet but I plan > to try it out!) > > Regards, > > Kapil. > --
ljmoore:/home/ljmoore# apt-get install libming-util Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done E: Couldn't find package libming-utilLooks like it isn't available in Debian Sarge for m68k. Thanks for the lead.
Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]
Hello,
I tested out libming-util. Unfortunately for those who want conversion to "jpeg" or some other bitmap format, Collinge's drawings are just that -- vector graphics. So you cannot use libming-util to extract a jpeg as there is none in there!
On Mon, 09 Apr 2007, ljmoore@wightman.ca wrote:
> Thanks for your attention and thought. No happy dance here yet. > > swf-player installs as a Mozilla plugin (but Mozilla is on long list > of programs that give n identical corba orb error messages and then > abort on invocation.) Firefox just barely runs here. > A swf plugin for Dillo would be good.
Try libflash-swfplayer. This is supposed to work with "any" browser. For some reason this blanks out some of the text when I use it to view the graphic.
> gnash requires compilation from source with > programs and libraries not ported to Debian Sarge. Debian Etch is not available on > my architecture (m68k.) All other roads have dead ended.
Is there no backport at backports.org?
> Has the swf format tech/spec been released?
In a sense yes. You can read the spec but you can't use the knowledge you gained to write a viewer!
Regards,
Kapil. --
[ljmoore at wightman.ca]
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 09:34:25AM +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
> Try libflash-swfplayer.apt-get says it's not available for me and my.
> > Is there no backport at backports.org?Backports.org? Never been there but the name is evocative. I'll check it out - thanks.
> > > Has the swf format tech/spec been released? > > In a sense yes. You can read the spec but you can't use the knowledge > you gained to write a viewer! > > Regards, > > Kapil. > -- >
Give me a second to absorb that -
The swf data format is a work of art that may be viewed but not be copied or derived from? A Norman Rockwell painting and the Rockwell estate? Gotta be a lawyer, I guess? I write a perl script that translates swf to jpeg, share it then expect to be threatened with legal face time. SIGH!
Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]
Hello,
On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, ljmoore@wightman.ca wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 09:34:25AM +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote: > > In a sense yes. You can read the spec but you can't use the knowledge > > you gained to write a viewer! > > Give me a second to absorb that - > > The swf data format is a work of art that may be viewed but not be copied or derived from? > A Norman Rockwell painting and the Rockwell estate? > Gotta be a lawyer, I guess? I write a perl script that translates swf to jpeg, share it > then expect to be threatened with legal face time. > SIGH!
It seems that is even more complex than I thought. Apparently (according to the authors of swfdec and gnash recently interviewed on LWN) in order to work on a swf renderer you should never have accepted the EULA for the proprietary viewer. Some have claimed that it is OK to have accepted the license in the past as long as you have now transferred the rights you so obtained to someone else (How? By signing a letter transferring your rights of course!).
That is wierd.
So you can write your perl script as long as you have never downloaded/installed the "free" (as in beer) player distributed by MacroMedia (and now Adobe).
Regards,
Kapil. --
[ljmoore at wightman.ca]
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 09:34:25AM +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote: > > It seems that is even more complex than I thought. Apparently > (according to the authors of swfdec and gnash recently interviewed on > LWN) in order to work on a swf renderer you should never have > accepted the EULA for the proprietary viewer. Some have claimed that > it is OK to have accepted the license in the past as long as you have > now transferred the rights you so obtained to someone else (How? By > signing a letter transferring your rights of course!). > > That is wierd. > > So you can write your perl script as long as you have never > downloaded/installed the "free" (as in beer) player distributed by > MacroMedia (and now Adobe). > > Regards, > > Kapil. > -- >Good laugh, thanks.
On m'lady's Mac, Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator but not ICab read swf. If Adobe asserts that an 'intellectual right' on their encoding scheme. swf, extends to the reproduction rights over the encoded contents, fine. Their position was different regarding pdf but that was long ago and a different country.
I have other tasks calling me.
I can read the Linux Gazette on the Mac rather than on my Linux system.
Good to have talked with you, Larry
Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]
Hello,
On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
> Try libflash-swfplayer. This is supposed to work with "any" browser. > For some reason this blanks out some of the text when I use it to > view the graphic.
I just tested out gnash from Debian "testing" (=lenny). This works fine with the HelpDex .swf files.
The only problem is that "gnash" is slooow. So, for a while I thought it had bombed on the graphic. Not so.
The "gnash" program just installs on "etch" pulling in "libgnash0" along with it. The mozilla plugins renders once and then gets stuck.
Regards,
Kapil. --
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 09:34:25AM +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
> Hello, > > I tested out libming-util. Unfortunately for those who want > conversion to "jpeg" or some other bitmap format, Collinge's drawings > are just that -- vector graphics. So you cannot use libming-util to > extract a jpeg as there is none in there!
How about an SVG? Or do they use some weird internal format for their vector graphics that can't be used for anything other than Flash?
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *