Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Wed, 18 May 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > On Tue, 17 May 2005, David Moberg wrote:
> >
> > > You mean use just the tool for extracting SWFs? I do think this is
> > > an option. However, I haven't used this software yet. I prefer to
> > > avoid SWFs. I believe that you want both packages, as the first
> > > one may not handle sound, while the second one can extract sound
> > > but not play an SWF.
> >
> > No, I asked if you could download the 1.5MB linux source code and
> > modify the package so as to compile only the tool that turned SWF
> > back into other formats, which is probably just one executable and
> > maybe a library or a few libraries.  (Like netpbm, another
> > collection of tools).  I could attempt to edit the Makefile so as
> > to make only the part I wanted.  I was surprised how easy it was to
> > compile playmidi without all the pieces (not that I have it working
> > yet, of course.  I plugged the sound card to a radio with
> > adjustable volume and turned it way up but got no sound so it must
> > be set somehow to null volume, as I think someone else mentioned).
>
> Why would I want to do this? This would be much harder than just
> compiling everything. It would be easier to just download the package
> and build it the normal way.

It was NOT easier for playmidi, because I would have needed to install a 
lot of extra libraries that I did not have or want in order to build the 
versions that display with X or GTK.  I will take a look at the source 
code some time and see what is needed to compile.  Also, it takes me 
longer to download the complete package than to download just the pieces I 
want (via sdf, where I can download at up to 70K/sec, unpack, then 
download at 1-2K/sec just the parts I want.)

The phone company is working on fixing the phone lines for my street today 
so they will work with ISPs, so I can't download 1.5MB anyway or test 
mplayer online yet.  (I have 14.4K access via the local bbs).

> > The .swf file sent us was, I think, just audio.  Like doc or pdf
> > files containing nothing but one png, MS wraps a lot of garbage
> > around what could be a simple format.
>
> It would be nice if more people followed Occam's razor here...

Instead, people have to write razor programs such as doc2png and 
pdfimages.