I received an e-mail today from Michael Lotz, who, among other projects, has been working on USB for Haiku and SVG support. Now he's been dedicating his time to porting Gnash 0.7.2 to BeOS and Haiku. Who better than himself to speak about it, so I leave you with his words, after the break, and a teaser screenshot. Enjoy (I know you will).

"I've been busy porting the latest Gnash 0.7.2 release to BeOS this weekend. I did start this port as the other version that was apparently ported earlier this year never had a public release. I've achieved a full port that is using the AGG rendering backend and a native BeOS GUI. I also wrote a Firefox plugin based on my SVG plugin (instead of trying to port the embedded X stuff). The native BeOS audio handler is yet incomplete, which is the reason why I didn't release anything yet.

While I hope to fill a gap for the BeOS community, there are some reasons why you shouldn't get too excited:

1. The port currently requires BONE. I will try to port back to plain R5, but that will most likely mean no network support will be included.

2. Gnash itself is not quite stable. It crashes sometimes and often blocks on assertions. I will put some more effort into resolving the latter so that it quits gracefully instead of freezing (which is especially painful if used as a plugin, because it takes the browser with it). But these are general Gnash issues which need to be fixed by the project.

3. Gnash works with most files up to version 7 and even with some of later versions. But don't expect the results to be perfect. There are holes in the parsing, rendering and ActionScript parts that prevent some files from working correctly.

For your viewing pleasure there are of course some screenshots:"

Once more, great work on Michael's part. As he progresses, we'll try to bring you up-to-date news about the port. Stay tuned! 

Comments

GREAT! Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 2006-11-27 13:28:38 I have said this before, but you ROCK! no question about it.

Written by DaaT on 2006-11-27 13:42:59 Wow, thanks. I'm just the messenger you know, but still, thanks.    :D

Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 2006-11-27 13:46:00 lol DaaT    mmlr: very tidy, would love to see a release soonish, even w/o sound

nice! Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 2006-11-27 13:59:54 wow!! awesome work as usual Michael

Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 2006-11-27 15:13:28 wow! way cool! would be awesome to have a Gnash BeOS port.

Written by biffuz on 2006-11-27 16:01:54 Nice to see one of the Bruno Bozzetto's animations here :-)

Thanks Written by jeanmarc on 2006-11-27 22:56:28 Thanks indeed for your work Michael !  I've been waiting for years for such news

Written by Banana on 2006-11-27 23:54:01 Beta version for preview, please?

Written by Giuseppe on 2006-11-28 00:04:24 Thank you for making this happen.. an important step!

Written by TQH on 2006-11-28 00:26:26 Very interesting! What Firefox are you using? My restructure of windows and views for Firefox was very untested for plugins, and I expected someone to mention breakage, but I never heard anything. Does that work flawless?

it's heartening news Written by Meanwhile on 2006-11-28 00:54:13 Great achievement, congratulations and thank you!!