Re: FLASH: FH9 vs AI9 (was: Curved text)

[John Dowdell]

At 6:22 PM 7/18/0, J. Lutes (pixelTwiddler) wrote:

> [inserts tongue into cheek]

>

> > Yes, the "Release to Layers" in FreeHand, that has now been

> > adopted by Illustrator

>

> Hmmm, I remember an Aldus product just a few short years ago that

> had some neat features which have now been adopted by a line of new

> Macromedia products.  Now, what was that software called again?

> [strokes chin pensively]  Boy, those were the kinder, gentler days!


Hmm, it might have beeen FreeHand... no, we took the entire tool from Aldus

there. Hey, Aldus also had SuperPaint, which had both vectors and bitmaps,

gadzooks... but the person who created SuperPaint then moved onto a

pure-vector tool called SmartSketch, later FutureSplash Animator, later....



ohmygosh, you're not talking about K2, are you!?  ;-)




> Just for kicks, save an AI 7 (or AI 6) file from Illustrator, import

> it into Flash and break it apart.  What did you get?  Something cool,

> I would bet.


Sidenote: I'd generally recommend breaking apart an .AI import anyway,

examining whether specific curves can be optimized for web delivery, seeing

whether specific parts can be simpler if either grouped or ungrouped... a

PostScript-writing tool may not be concerned about curve count, and Flash's

built-in curve optimization and layering effects can help greatly.


(Sidenote to the sidenote: Consider a squiggly shape upon a square. This

might actually be cheaper if the squiggle is left grouped... if the two are

ungrouped and merged, then I think you'll be describing that squiggly

outline twice, as it punches out of the background square.)




> It is too bad for designers that Macromedia has persisted in clinging to

> legacy Future Splash technology for color and gradient handling, even in

> version 4 of Flash.


? The SWF representation is pretty compact. What would you prefer?


> Otherwise, we might be able to re-color a gradient without having to

> re-fill the object....


True, the selection model is different... Flash 4 doesn't have actual

Inspectors which modify the current selection, as Fireworks and other tools

do. The SneakPeeks at FlashForward did show that the Flash engineering team

was working in this direction, so it's likely that we'll see a more

Inspector-based model in future versions.


> ...or get more accurate color translations for imported artwork.


That may still be hard, depending where the art is coming from... for

instance, there are a few posts each week in the Adobe areas where people

get fouled by colorspace profiles, monitor settings, even color definitions

like LAB vs CMYK.




> ...until the day it can be transferred as editable text along a path,

> instead of just in blocks....


Sorry, to import editable text along a path would require that Flash itself

have the concept of text-on-path. (Fireworks 3.0 can export SWF with

editable text, or text-on-path, but not both simultaneously, because Flash

can't edit text-on-path.)




There's always lots of work to do... you can affect the priority rankings

by

wish-flashmacromedia [dot] com

, thanks.


jd






John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US

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