FLASH: Help with wish list

[Daniel J. O'Neil]

Coming from a visual design perspective, I have to push for improved

text handling in Flash:


1. Ability to do find-and-replace with text (including not just

characters but also font faces, sizes, and styles.)

2. Ability to automate replacement of dumb quotes, apostrophes, double

hyphens, and three periods with fine typographic characters like smart

quotes, apostrophes, em dashes, and ellipses (even ligatures). This is a

standard feature of most word processors. It is a bear having to type

the special code for curly quotes all the time.

3. Ability to import text formats like Microsoft Word and RTF (which

support the typographic characters mentioned above)  as well as ASCII

text. Along with that, the ability to do cut & paste from Word without

text being converted to ASCII (making me once again have to do the

curly-quote code-typing thing).

4. Better text anti-aliasing (blurring is too heavy at small sizes).

5. Ability to turn off text antialiasing both globally and for

individual text boxes. Along with that, the ability to set antialiasing

for text only above a certain size (e.g. 14pt)--this is a longtime

feature in Director. Having greater control over text antialiasing would

produce both more readable layouts and make animation with text much

more feasible (since the engine wouldn't be slowed down by all the

antialiasing calculations).

6. Spell-checker.

7. The ability to create linked text boxes (such as in Quark and

PageMaker). Thus, I could have a story in three linked text boxes, and

when I delete a passage from one box, the text reflows through all three

boxes. (This feature could have saved me hours of work a few months

ago.)

8. Ability to wrap text along a path or within a shape.

9. Tracking controls and better kerning and leading controls.


Other non-text improvements I'd like to see:

1. Ability to import the latest versions of the Adobe Illustrator format

(v7 & v8). In addition, ability to maintain Illustrator gradients

intact. (I lose them when I bring in Illustrator files.) I can imagine

some gorgeous Flash work happening if Flash 4 could support

Illustrator's new gradient mesh feature.

2. Ability to set and edit properties for multiple symbol instances at

the same time. It would be great that if I suddenly decided I wanted to

make four different symbol instances on the stage partially transparent,

I could multiple-select them and simply set the alpha level once.

3. Sound support for MIDI and SWA. Ability to import AIFFs on a PC.

4. Ability to import TIFF, PSD (with layers intact), and CGM.

5. Getting rid of some of the more arcane program requirements (as I see

it):

-ability to set transparency for all objects (not just symbols)

-ability to motion tween ungrouped objects

-ability to shape tween grouped objects and symbols

-ability to assign a reusable action directly to a button symbol (rather

than having to place an instance of it in a movie clip and assign the

action to that instance)

6. Ability to link from movie 1 to a specific named frame of movie 2,

with movie 2 replacing movie 1 (i.e. not having both movies open at the

same time and using tell target to control one from the other). Similar

in concept to anchor names in HTML.


Great idea, Erik. Thanks!

--

Daniel J. O'Neil

M.S. Technical Communication

Instructor, Writing to the World Wide Web

Developer, Academy of Electronic Media

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

--

email:

oneildrpi [dot] edu

home: http://www.rpi.edu/~oneild

WWWW: http://www.rpi.edu/~oneild/wwww




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