Özkan Pakdil on Flash for Linux

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Özkan Pakdil a.k.a. mascix, on IRC. I am 24 years old and from Turkey.

How did you start the project?

A friend of mine suggested me to submit F4L to Freshmeat so that it could get more exposure.

What made you start working on it before you submitted it to Sourceforge?

About 5 months ago me and my friends were talking about a good project we could use as a reference for our graduation. They suggested to code something like ICQ but because there already are a lot of projects for instant messaging on Linux we decided not to do that. Then I had the idea of F4L.

IBM Türkiye had a competition between universities in Turkey about application development on Linux. One of the rules was that projects have to be open source. F4L was chosen as a finalist from 21 projects.

What license is F4L distributed under?

F4L is fully GPL.

What is the current status of F4L?

F4L is not finished, yet. Currently it works just like KPaint and other drawing programs, so there isn't any motion tweening at the moment. I just wrote code in C++ and Osman Yüksel, a Flash designer, has made some samples and screenies.

What code can we find in CVS? What functions are working ?

Right now, it can draw 2D objects and can import other images. If someone would want to make an animation, he/she can make it by hand as it can add frames. :) After adding some frames, you can draw objects and move the timeline cursor by hand one by one and watch animation. There isn't an SWF output option, yet.

Basically, I created the menus based on Flash's layout, but not all the options are available, yet. In the Window menu, some options are working and about half are working in the Text menu.

Do you plan to have those features in F4L?

Right now I am working for s3dmesh.sf.net, which is my graduating project for university and, therefore, I'm lacking some time, but I plan to have things like motion tweening and other abilities like Flash has.

So right now the project is paused?

Yes, temporarily. It is more in a sleep mode now and it will be awake in about 1.5 months. Now, I am looking for developers who want to help me, which is why I decided to announce it on Freshmeat.

What does the project need most right now?

Developers. Actually, I wanted to make this team bigger, but good developers already seem to have their projects and don't want to work for F4L. I hope that announcing my project on Freshmeat will attract a few developers that are looking in the same direction as F4L.

Is there a mailinglist for F4L?

Yes, there is a mailinglist at sourceforge and there is a also contact link on our website

What motivates you to work on F4L?

I think that, within any given Linux environment, there is an extreme lack of WYSIWYG type applications -- particularly of the Flash variety. In the Windows world, Flash is a well-known tool for creating animated vector graphics. I want to bring this type of functionality to Linux, but I do realize that this will not be an easy task. Flash functionality is very hard to duplicate. Typically, users do not know about the internals of good SWF designers such as its algorithms and data structures. They just create great looking Flash videos for the Internet. With all the algorithms and data structures involved, I believe doing this application will make me a more experienced developer. :)

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