Flash is bigger than ever

It’s been ages since my last post but these things are big enough that woke me up and made me blog about them:

1) You can compile actionscript 2 files into swf without the Flash IDE.
I just installed MTASC (Motion-Twin Actionscript2 Compiler) on my linux box and compiled my first swf movie, how cool is that?!
The compiler is opensource and free, it is a command line compiler so you can integrate it with your fav editor, it is actually quite simple to install (for win there is no installation whatsoever, for linux you just need to make sure that you have OCaml installed) and according to the official page, it is faster than the MM compiler.
The least you can do is try it out
(via JD on MX)

2) There is a new kind of generic documentation generator in the hood: Naturaldocs
Aral from Flashant has started a campaign to bring support for Actionscrip 2 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE into Naturaldocs. Read more deatils here.

3) Actually, this has been news for some time now, but i find it extremelly important for rich application development (and i haven’t blogged about it when it was fresh news) so i am goin to point it out here too:
The great guys and gals from Ariaware have released ARP, an open-source pattern-based framewrok for Flash and Flex RIA development.

Is Flash bigger than ever or what?

Central 1.5 is out!

I am sure everybody is blogging about this already, so i am going to be short:
Macromedia Central 1.5 is finally out.
New features in this release (btw, this is still a developer release) are:
- File I/O support
- File upload and download support
- Automatic network detection
- Flash MX 2004 extensions to better integrate Flash authoring with Central during development
- Support for Flash Player 7, ActionScript 2.0, and the new component architecture
- Support for instant messaging and presence detection using the AOL AIM and ICQ networks
Also, Macromedia distilled Central licensing down into two simple models:
- open distribution
- try buy

Learn more at the Central Developer Center.

as2docgenerator going opensource

I recieved quite a few emails regarding as2docgenerator updates, aditional features, offering help, asking for source code … and i would like to thank each one of you for showing interest in this little project

I realized that if as2docgenerator is going to improve i would need help from other developers, so i decided to submit it to berliOS Developer website (thank you Aral for the tip ) under the GNU GLP.
If you want to help you need to register at berliOS and then mail me your username so i can add you to the project.

as2docgenerator at berliOS

ps.
i forgot to give my mail address: klaut[at]klaustrofobik[dot]org

AS2docGenerator minor update

Finally, i have some minor updates to the AS2docGenerator:
- added suport for the @interface tag,
- you can now add as a parameter a directory containing .as class files (or other directories with .as class files) and it will generate a _docs directory with all the html outputs

example usage:
1) single .as file:
C:\> [path to]AS2docGenerator.exe [path to]AS2class.as
this generates a AS2class_doc.html file in the same directory AS2class.as is in.

2) a directory with .as files and/or other directories:
C:\> [path to]AS2docGenerator.exe [path to]AS2classDirectory
this generates a _docs directory in the same directory where the AS2docGenerator.exe was called from. All the asClass_doc.html files are in the _docs directory.

download it from here.

The project is still in beta so bugs and other naughty insects are possible

Simple Interactive Expression Parser

It’s been a long time since my last post and to put some “life” back to this blog, i thought i’d post one of those “ported from java” experiments.
Very little work on my part, actually.. thanks to syntax similarities between AS2 and java.

This one is from the book The Art of Java, Chapter 2: A Recursive-Descent Expression Parser.

Test it here.
Download source here

Flash MX2004 LiveDocs

This is something i didn’t know it exsisted until just recently: Flash MX2004 Livedocs at MM site.
All the documentation from the Help panel is now online, but you can also add your own comments or code samples and read others. It is something that’s got potential if flash users (we) will start “using” it

Flash 2004 command line compiler

Mike Chambers released FlashCommand (a commandline compiler for Flash 2004).
read more about it here.

string permutations (from java to AS2)

In order to learn AS2 i’ve started to study java more intensely and translate various code snippets to AS2 and to great suprise, some of them can be just copy/pasted (syntactically speaking).
Here’s an example. I came across this link with some usefull java code to learn from. If you take a look at this PermuteString java class and the AS2 version below, you can see that i merely copied the code meat into an AS2 class (yeah, shame on me!).


class StringPermutator
{
private var __word:String;
private var __index:Number;
private var __substring:StringPermutator;

function StringPermutator(s:String)
{
__word = s;
__index = 0;
if(s.length > 1) __substring = new StringPermutator(s.substring(1));
}

public function hasMorePermutations():Boolean
{
return __index

and you can test it here.

JSAPI reference

Tired of waiting for the official MM jsapi reference?
Here’s a nice one: JSAPI Overview

via flashcoders.

Extending AS2 Array

According to gSkinner’s post, when you extend an array you must call the superClass constructor in a particular way so that the indefinite amount of arguments get passed along correctly to the parent class:

class ArrayExtended extends Array
{
function ArrayExtended(){
super.constructor.apply(this, arguments);
}
public function someFunc(){
return length;
}

}

Well, that never worked for me… actually that’s very strange because it appears as if it works for some but not for others..

today i came across a post a Tween Pix and the solution that i saw there is working:

class ArrayExtended extends Array
{
function ArrayExtended(){
splice.apply(this, [0, 0].concat(arguments));
}
public function someFunc(){
return length;
}

}


but im still wondering WHY the gskinner’s variant doesn’t work for me??!

UPDATE:
The solution above (the one that works for me) was actually first posted at flashcoders mailing list