Aleksandr Trufanov's Forum Nokia Blog - "Project Capuchin"-like solution for Symbian C++

Why not Janus?

Sorcery-ltd — 2008-10-01T16:20:16Z

OK, so did you see that Janus Symbian Engine is open source? It isn't a perfect solution but you can write your UI in Flash Lite and have it send all commands to a Symbian application running the Janus HTTP server and command parser. You can extend the Symbian part to do whatever you want and send results back to the Flash player to update the UI.

If you could embed something like gameswf into your application, how would you interface the UI to your C++ code - you'd have to create some kind of bridge between the environments. It would be possible to create something better than simple socket or HTTP based comms but it would be a lot of work.

BTW, if you want to make a maintainable animated UI then you really do want ActionScript support.

I wouldn't count on Adobe opening up the player source since they currently make money by licensing it! They do have significant income from selling the tools though, so it isn't impossible.

However, unless you have a specific use case that can't work with a local server communicating with the Flash player over a socket then I think you can already do what you're suggesting.

Mark

truf — 2008-10-01T13:12:06Z

Yes, i'm aware about KuneriLite and Janus Symbian Engine. But such kind of solutions intended to enhance FL applications, not SC++ application. They try to increase FL functionality with some C++ plugins and take out FL from sandbox. That's cool but useless for me as Symbian C++ developer.
I'm talking about using FL instead of native UI in Symbian C++ applications. That significally increase speed of application development on Symbian C++ - Achilles heel of that language. FL allow create much more user friendly UI.

About algorithms - gameswf was first result from my google search, so i think more suitable projects may be found in the net. Also, i'm sure Forum Nokia will support such initiative and perhaps Adobe will support its too. They already make us happy once in this year with Open Project. I think such initiative will be correspont to course of current Adobe marketing policy.

What we really need from Active Script: we just need a way to display a button, get its events and perhaps animate it... We dont need full Active Script support in symbian if we want to use its instead of UI. Let it be incompatible with Adobe Player... at least for beginning.

How much integration do you want?

Sorcery-ltd — 2008-10-01T11:43:06Z

Hi,

Have you seen KuneriLite or Janus Symbian Engine? You can do some Flash Lite and Symbian C++ communication already.

The SWF file format is published but the rendering algorithms are not, so these 3rd party solutions are not necessarily accurate/compatible with the official Adobe player. I'm not sure if any of them can really keep up with the pace of Adobe's developments long term.

For example, gameswf says it's pre-alpha and has very limited support for ActionScript. Not too useful to most Flash Lite developers.

Mark