[Gnash] Gnash roadmap ?

[Nicolas Cannasse]

Hi list,

I'm interested in Flash technologies and an open source player looks 
like a very promosing idea. I actually worked on such a player one year 
ago, using the AGG Lite library (http://www.antigrain.com) for rendering 
the SWF. The goal was not to make a Flash Player but to be able to use 
SWF resources for the animation. It worked great.

I have a good knowledge of the SWF file format, both for rendering and 
for the ActionScript bytecode (I wrote MTASC, an open source AS2 
compiler - see http://www.mtasc.org). I know also about Virtual Machines 
since I'm working on the Neko VM (http://nekovm.org) which was the one 
powering the other player I was talking about.

I would like to hear more about Gnash and know in which area some work 
is needed. I had a quick look at the sources, some parts are looking a 
bit messy right now :) The code seems to come from GameSWF and maybe 
other parts. Is there some kind of "redesign from scratch" (using 
previous code but rearchitectured) planned ? What is the current status 
and roadmap ?

Also, one of my concerns is about the usage of OpenGL. While this might 
speed up things on the desktop, it would be interesting to comeup with a 
small and portable player that could be embedded in applications and 
small devices, where there is clearly a need for such a player. Any 
comments on this point ?

I'm interested also about the current AS VM in Gnash. How does it 
compete with Macromedia Flash7 VM ? (which is awfully slow) Is there 
some plans in the future to support Flash8 features ? (filters might not 
be a so good idea with OpenGL ?) What about the Flash 8.5 virtual 
machine which defines a new set of bytecode - currently being reverse 
engineered little-by-little ? I know it's a bit early to ask about all 
theses but they might be important in the way the code is designed from 
the beginning.

Best,

Nicolas