Re: [Swftools-common] Swftools, PDF and HTML5

[filip sound]

i'm replying to the video you've posted.

Matthias, i can't believe all this...
are you serious? you want the browser to render complex graphics/shapes/gradients and texts (pdf) all in html? the performance will not be anything near the performance you get when running it on a plugin that has full access to the cpu. also on the ipad you always have to stick with a webview or browser. this was the first thing that i tested on the iPad: if the webview is strong enough for complex svg (which was not mentioned yet in this discussion - but should be since its open and supported by browsers more than html5) rendering - and it was not! the same applies for html5 and it crashes from time to time when zooming.

plain reading of pdf files is no new experience. the scribd player is not really great - wheres the multimedia experience, the surplus to a plain pdf loaded into adobe acrobat? this seems to be a step backwards all just because steve jobs is trying to push away from flash for only one reason that i dont want to mention here again. offering a html version of pdfs is not an innovative idea - and trying to continue the nonsense steve jobs started by comparing flash to html5 is just not clever.

greetings to Jared Friedman,
  filip

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Martin Perez <address@hidden> wrote:

Thanks Mathias. Very clear answer.

Just randomly thinking that perhaps you could start that new project at Apache with the actual source code of pdf2swf (and its descendants). The current location is ok but it is a bit hidden so I guess you could get extra infrastructure for free and perhaps more contributors (not like me, a mere lurker) willing to convert pdf2swf into the standard set of tools to manipulate HTML5, swf and pdf.

Or.... probably much better for yourself ...... create a converter and sell it to Adobe :-)

Best,
Martin

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:33 AM, Matthias Kramm <address@hidden> wrote:

On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 11:25:22AM +0200, Martin Perez <address@hidden> wrote:
> It looks like though that market is moving towards HTML5 and many players
> are moving their flash based viewers from flash to this standard. So a few
> questions arise with regards to swftools and custom viewers. So, is there
> any plans to provide tools to move from flash to html5? Some kind of
> swftohtml5.

I do have plans to open-source building blocks for converting documents
to HTML5. That is, it's something I want to do.
It's yet way too early to provide any details or time estimates though.

One of the many questions is whether to incorporate things like this
into swftools (possibly renaming it), or to start a new project centered
around document conversions in general, as oposed to SWF.

pdf2swf, while popular, has always had a different scope than all the
other parts of swftools, so maybe it (and it's descendants) deserve its'
own project.

> Any plans to an html5 basic viewer?

Probably not. Same as with pdf2swf, the best approach was always to give
people a basic conversion solution, and let them craft their own UI
around it.

> Or alternatively, what would
> be the necessary steps to move our documents converted with swftools to
> html5.

Well, right now Flash has still a very high penetration, so let's not
be hasty. pdf2swf still gets the job done, and I'm still actively
supporting it.
That being said, once the time has come for a pdf2html5, I'm sure
there'll be a swf2html5 as well- in the same way that there currently
are swf2pdf (etc.) tools that convert (pdf2swf generated) swf files
to other formats.

Also, for the curious, here are a few links to the new HTML5
conversion technology of Scribd:

Keynote from our CTO:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wultk6iKXk&feature=PlayList&p=B415D73E4A22F82E&playnext_from=PL&index=8
HTML5 example documents:

   http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5

   http://www.scribd.com/documents/5/Paper-5
Engineering blog (will start containing HTML5 technology posts on Monday):
   http://coding.scribd.com/

Matthias

--
Martín Pérez

Founder,
http://www.jobsket.com