On Sun, 31 Aug 2003 00:47:48 -0400 Rob <lau(a)kudla.org> wrote:
On Saturday 30 August 2003 22:01, RTaylor wrote:
Flash runs in
Wine but... why not go with something a little
more standardized? SVG.
Because file format standards are no good to an artist unless
your audience can handle the format and the format can handle
your art?
Adobe's viewer is free... so's Corels. Installation's no more
complex than installing the Flash viewer. Both companies offer
http://www.adobe.com/products/golive/main.html
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel/Products/productInfo&…
authoring tools that are every bit as capable as Macromedias.
The open source movement offers many more tools to author SVG
than to author SWF. {It's one of linux's strongpoints.}
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/SVG-Implementations.htm8#svgedit
As far as audio goes... Real's Helix project gives you the
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/
https://www.helixcommunity.org/2002/intro/potential-projects
tools to do anything you need at the same level of quality that
any other system on the 'net can give you.
It's the format that the w3c intends to call standard...
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8
It's as capable and usable as SWF... There's absolutely no reason
not to use it.
I know what I'd be using today if I were a
cartoonist or animator
and it ain't SVG... not even sure it can handle some of the
stuff I've seen people do with SWF. (Kind of like how the GIF
patent expired in the US before PNG ever got support for
animation....) How much of the stuff at, say,
homestarrunner.com is SVG ready to handle right now without
making the end user jump through hoops? And are the creation
tools anywhere near as useful or would they be writing XML in
emacs when they should be drawing funny, TV-quality cartoons?
Ultimately, when you're confronted with a choice between a
well-supported and complete proprietary "standard" and a
nascent, not entirely ready for end users open "standard", you
end up having to decide which is more important to you: your own
artistic (or commercial) statement or the free vs. proprietary
debate. Most artists have enough invested in their work for it
to take precedence over software philosophy. Even Stallman's
Any artist worth his salt researches his tools to a fairly high
degree. {Tho' that does seem to be going out of favor}
hilarious "gather round and share the
software" song ended up in
mp3 format at some point before Ogg was ready... and I can't see
myself putting music out there in anything but mp3, even now. I
gotta think it'll be an even longer wait before you can have the
expectation that the mainstream user will be able to see your
visual work if it's in SVG format.
Rob