actionscript, from the macromedia standpoint is really simple. onEnterFrame = function (){trace("this is the next thing I'm doing")}. with the flash documentation, one can glean computer science 101. With flex, it looks like, so far as understanding the underlying functionality is concerned, it's a retrograde step. If you talk to a car mechanic they complain that in the past they could maintain a car. Now however, most manufacturers create sealed units which can be replaced, but can't be understood or tinkered with. This analogy stands with flex. lots of trickery under the hood, but no clear way of understanding it. I thought as was a brilliant introduction to programming ( or scripting, as i now understand it), and despite the remarks about this being a failed project, i think there is a pretty clear reason, with simple solutions. I went to see a friend who is using AS to some effect creating multimedia cd roms etc. lots and lots of unmaintainable, unmanageable, non-reusable code. The idioms of the flash design platform are fantastic only up to a certain level of complexity. as2lib, as i understand it, was an attempt to bridge the gap between designer/programmer and full scale application development. My point, and the reason why I think this project hasn't seen the success it deserves, is this. the guys on this project are writing for an audience far and away above the common level of understanding needed to use flash. I'm not unintelligent, and I've put some time into understanding design patterns, logging, reflection etc. but when it comes down to it, there is a significant information gap between actionscript hackery and the ocean of computer science. The as2lib project is only intelligible to those who already have a significant understanding of programming, and not neccesarily to those whose background is wading in the tepid waters of flash. I've been lurking around this project for a bit trying to find say, code that works out of the box, or a new faq that explains aop a bit more clearly, with actionscript examples rather than aspectj (as is ubiquitous online). for example, the examples on how the aop framework works don't work, and I don't know whether this was because the api has changed, or the development has ceased totally, or some other reason i'm not aware of. I didn't want to see this project die without saying something. If the documentation was clearer, and the examples worked, and some more explanations were introduced, maybe more people would understand it and it would garner more support. for your consideration.
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First the good news: There will soon be a new release with a bunch of example. Simon has been working on it for longer time.
Then the bad news: I did not. Mostly because I gave up.
I honor Simons work but I for myself think that there is no future in the as2lib. The reasons for this a pretty obvious: No support of community and Adobe puts efforts into removing as2 from all minds.
No matter how good or bad the as2lib is there is no audience as you might have have very well recognized. This is because of the design of the as2lib relies to a list of rules a list of things we expect and I confess those are not perfect these days. This is not because the as2lib has a bad approach its because what we do is using lots of workarounds for problems of as2 (that have mostly not be removed in as3). Personally I can say my trust in the flash community has almost gone.
yours
Martin.
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I've been using various pacakages of as2lib for the past year and it's been an incredible help in our projects. The logging API, especially, has changed and improved our whole debugging and testing process. Now, I'm starting to look at AS3 projects and wondering how I'll cope without the trusty LogManager.getLogger(). There also seems to be other cool packages in the latest SVN source like all Batch, Process, Locale, PropertiesFile... Yes, things like regular expressions are available with AS3, but a lot of the pacakges that as2lib provides could still be extremely useful, even with AS3.
However I agree with themad, that "...the as2lib project is only intelligible to those who already have a significant understanding of programming". And as he implies, the key point is that at first glance it's difficult for "general" users to work out what problems AS2LIB solves, what benefits it could bring to their projects, and crucially, how they would implement it. So I definitely think that improvements to documentation, examples, tutorials (video tutorials?) etc. could help "sell" the project.
I'm sorry, Martin, that you've perhaps not found the project appreciated. For what it's worth, I would like to congratulate you all on what I think is still a great project.
Bobby
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Hmm: It is good to hear that the as2lib is useful after all: I mean: I use it for myself often and I am thinking too about how to continue using it. Actually I think I will (sooner or later) take some of the work to haXe because to me haXe is a lot more powerful than as3. Unfortunatly Nicolas is doing a one-man job which could be a killer for the platform. Anyway it is great stuff and I am working at an approach to work with haXe at my own project. Once thats working I will presumable port some of the libraries to haXe (which means Flash9 support). As I told: This might take a while - but - a while has gone since last update from as2lib. I'll keep this forum up-to-date once my mind decided to have a new direction again.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
actionscript, from the macromedia standpoint is really simple. onEnterFrame = function (){trace("this is the next thing I'm doing")}. with the flash documentation, one can glean computer science 101. With flex, it looks like, so far as understanding the underlying functionality is concerned, it's a retrograde step. If you talk to a car mechanic they complain that in the past they could maintain a car. Now however, most manufacturers create sealed units which can be replaced, but can't be understood or tinkered with. This analogy stands with flex. lots of trickery under the hood, but no clear way of understanding it. I thought as was a brilliant introduction to programming ( or scripting, as i now understand it), and despite the remarks about this being a failed project, i think there is a pretty clear reason, with simple solutions. I went to see a friend who is using AS to some effect creating multimedia cd roms etc. lots and lots of unmaintainable, unmanageable, non-reusable code. The idioms of the flash design platform are fantastic only up to a certain level of complexity. as2lib, as i understand it, was an attempt to bridge the gap between designer/programmer and full scale application development. My point, and the reason why I think this project hasn't seen the success it deserves, is this. the guys on this project are writing for an audience far and away above the common level of understanding needed to use flash. I'm not unintelligent, and I've put some time into understanding design patterns, logging, reflection etc. but when it comes down to it, there is a significant information gap between actionscript hackery and the ocean of computer science. The as2lib project is only intelligible to those who already have a significant understanding of programming, and not neccesarily to those whose background is wading in the tepid waters of flash. I've been lurking around this project for a bit trying to find say, code that works out of the box, or a new faq that explains aop a bit more clearly, with actionscript examples rather than aspectj (as is ubiquitous online). for example, the examples on how the aop framework works don't work, and I don't know whether this was because the api has changed, or the development has ceased totally, or some other reason i'm not aware of. I didn't want to see this project die without saying something. If the documentation was clearer, and the examples worked, and some more explanations were introduced, maybe more people would understand it and it would garner more support. for your consideration.
First the good news: There will soon be a new release with a bunch of example. Simon has been working on it for longer time.
Then the bad news: I did not. Mostly because I gave up.
I honor Simons work but I for myself think that there is no future in the as2lib. The reasons for this a pretty obvious: No support of community and Adobe puts efforts into removing as2 from all minds.
No matter how good or bad the as2lib is there is no audience as you might have have very well recognized. This is because of the design of the as2lib relies to a list of rules a list of things we expect and I confess those are not perfect these days. This is not because the as2lib has a bad approach its because what we do is using lots of workarounds for problems of as2 (that have mostly not be removed in as3). Personally I can say my trust in the flash community has almost gone.
yours
Martin.
I've been using various pacakages of as2lib for the past year and it's been an incredible help in our projects. The logging API, especially, has changed and improved our whole debugging and testing process. Now, I'm starting to look at AS3 projects and wondering how I'll cope without the trusty LogManager.getLogger(). There also seems to be other cool packages in the latest SVN source like all Batch, Process, Locale, PropertiesFile... Yes, things like regular expressions are available with AS3, but a lot of the pacakges that as2lib provides could still be extremely useful, even with AS3.
However I agree with themad, that "...the as2lib project is only intelligible to those who already have a significant understanding of programming". And as he implies, the key point is that at first glance it's difficult for "general" users to work out what problems AS2LIB solves, what benefits it could bring to their projects, and crucially, how they would implement it. So I definitely think that improvements to documentation, examples, tutorials (video tutorials?) etc. could help "sell" the project.
I'm sorry, Martin, that you've perhaps not found the project appreciated. For what it's worth, I would like to congratulate you all on what I think is still a great project.
Bobby
Hmm: It is good to hear that the as2lib is useful after all: I mean: I use it for myself often and I am thinking too about how to continue using it. Actually I think I will (sooner or later) take some of the work to haXe because to me haXe is a lot more powerful than as3. Unfortunatly Nicolas is doing a one-man job which could be a killer for the platform. Anyway it is great stuff and I am working at an approach to work with haXe at my own project. Once thats working I will presumable port some of the libraries to haXe (which means Flash9 support). As I told: This might take a while - but - a while has gone since last update from as2lib. I'll keep this forum up-to-date once my mind decided to have a new direction again.