Re: FLASH: Object oriented? (is: software history)

[John Dowdell]

At 7:19 AM 3/8/0, Brian Mays wrote:

> Can some help clear up what exactly "object oriented" in relation

> to Live Motion and Flash is?  I'm trying to explain the difference

> to my supervisors, but I'm not very clear myself on what "object

> oriented" is and how this differs from what Flash uses.


It's hard, because the term is used in many different ways.... ;-)


Generally, when someone uses this phrase, it means they're referring to an

object in some way. (yeah, weak, I know, but that seems to be the only

commonality! ;-)


>From what I've seen of Adobe's promotional literature, they're using the

term "object-oriented timeline" when they actually mean parameter-based

keyframing. This has all been well-defined in the 3D world, where you

really _need_ to be able to set keyframes for individual parameters like X

position, red component, etc. If you don't mind a bit of a "timeline"

timeline:


--  Paracomp's Swivel 3D was the first commercial desktop 3D tool. It had

no timeline, but used pure keyframing: you'd go to a frame, manipulate the

objects, and that would be your keyframe... the program would tween all

objects for you.


--  MacroMind 3D was actually the first desktop program to use the

parameter-based keyframing that later migrated to ElectricImage, to CoSA

AfterEffects, and much later to desktop tools like Kinetix 3DS Max. Every

attribute of every object had its own keyframes. (This was based on Ed

Catmull's pioneering work at New York University... believe it was called

"Twixt", but mainframe and non-commercial.)


--  After MM3D, Infini-D, Strata, and Ray Dream offered object-based

keyframing, where each object had its own keyframe, but where parameters

would not be individually manipulated. In later releases they later moved

to full parameter-based keying... 3D animation really requires this type of

exposure.


Recap: Key info can be set of the entire frame, or for individual objects,

or for individual properties of individual objects. There have been various

approaches for various tasks.



The phrase "object oriented" means something _very different_ to

programmers... if you use Lingo, you know how you can create an instance of

a script, with its own private properties, and have this communicate with

other objects, inherit or encapsulate other classes, etc.


Then again, in commercial software the phrase "object oriented" usually

means "unique and new", as you might recall from Kaleida's ScriptX Project,

or the later mTropolis application. The term has been used in many ways.


In Adobe's promotional literature, they also use the phrase "object

oriented" when talking about applying pixel-based effects to shapes, as in

Fireworks. They also refer to "object oriented" it when talking about

replacing objects in an animation, sort of like a symbol library if they

had that.


(btw, I just revisted that LiveMotion page... that splash SWF is 65K. Why

is it so big? and where's its MIME type information? There are some things

I just don't understand.... ;-)



Summary: The term "object oriented" has a specific meaning in computer

engineering, but it has had *many* different meanings in software

marketing.... ;-)


jd









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