Salasaga Fills Flash Creation Hole for Linux

Linux.com's Bruce Byfield is reporting that Salasaga, the renamed Flame Project, is attempting to fill the functionality gap of Flash creation for Linux in addition to being a cross-platform tool. While it still lacks the spit-shine of more mature apps, it is going a long way to filling yet another hole in Linux software. "Opening Salasaga, you could easily think you are in a slide show program. Individual slides display on the left, and the current slide appears on the bottom right. On the top right is information about the layers on the current side. Menus are logically laid out across the top of the editing window. From the editing menu, you can set the defaults for new projects, including the default display size of finished projects, the preview width, and the default background color. After adjusting these settings, you proceed logically from the right as you develop a project, progressing from Screenshots for importation through Slide and Layer to Export. This progression is so logical that few viewers should have trouble teaching themselves the basics of the software and producing a test project in less than 20 minutes -- and saving it in native .flame format or exporting it to Flash or SVG formats."

Link and Summary

[26199]

On the off-chance someone was going to RTFA, here is the FA [linux.com], since it doesn't seem to have made it into the story.

The following line probably tells most people what they want to know:

Also missing are features that those familiar with Flash Professional or Adobe Captivate might expect, such as drawing tools, a scripting language, and support for sound and video.

So what does it do? Well, slideshows. Handy, but not hugely exciting.

Re:URL

[jambarama]

This [salasaga.org] probably should've made the post.

Re:Link and Summary

[someone300]

Seems that Flex [wikipedia.org] provides a more complete Flash creation tool than this software. What's more, Adobe are supporting it under Linux, and you can pick up an alpha version of Flex Builder based on Eclipse already.

To me, it seems that this software would be more suited to a plugin for OpenOffice.org Impress.

Re:Here is the truth...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate that this comment has been modded down because it shows me that some Linux supporters are just as bad with critique as Windows users. Sure, the comment is a bit harsh, but it isn't off the mark.

It's down, because it's off topic.

Oh, THAT kind of flash

[overshoot]

At first I thought it meant the light that comes out of 'puters with the magic smoke.

I never noticed that Linux had a problem in that regard.

What about a player?

[Epistax]

Here I am in amd64... can I have an integrated flash player that WORKS please? Gnash is utter crap (arg please don't say contribute, I haven't the time to do anything but work and flame on slashdot). I don't want to make a chroot 32 environment / install every 32 bit library in existence...

Does anyone in my situation have a suggestion? I've also tried broken firefox add-ons, including: Magic's Video - Downloader, Media Pirate - The Video Downloader, and Video Download. I can watch about 1/3 of youtube videos. 1/3 don't work at all, and 1/3 only show the first frame. I haven't seen one interactive flash that works. Some flash completely freezes up firefox. Maybe I'd have luck with a different browser :P

Re:Link and Summary

[anomalous cohort]

Salasaga seems to be about authoring slide shows in SWF format. In which case, it will need to do a better job than the Export function of the Open Office Impress application.

Re:Here is the truth...

[SanityInAnarchy]

The reality is that Linux has little to offer to the inexperienced user.

Face it, no OS has much to offer to the inexperienced user. The question is, how much does it take to become an experienced user? Or how much does the OS get in your way if you're inexperienced?

The same novice that is seen disconcerted by the impossibility to do a simple one copy-paste between QT and GTK applications.

Been doing this for years.

Go out and ask to the people how they install a program that does NOT have packages for its distribucción

Simple: Treat the distribution as an OS. If it doesn't have a native package for Ubuntu, then as a novice user, assume it doesn't support Ubuntu.

Now, I dare you to find a slicker way to install and maintain programs than Synaptic.

Explain him why in his Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Fedora cannot see many web pages: he must download the Flash and the Java plugin, in order then to install them with complicated commands.

Oh please:

apt-get install sun-java6-jre flashplugin-nonfree

And there's a GUI for that, too, if you need it. I think it prompts you on first boot now.

Also make him know that he won't be able to listen its MP3, WMA and WMV files.

Except he can -- again, absurdly simple to enable. First time you click on an MP3, you'll get a prompt that'll guide you through installing the necessary packages.

You're not even trying, are you?

Tell to the flaming buyer of a new AMD64 how he can play flash games.

Worst case? Tell them to install a 32-bit OS. Not as if they'd be worse off than in Windows.

besides, the drivers don't come in the distributions. ..becuase of the fucking freedom

Again, only a few clicks away. And once they're installed, they'll actually auto-update, and stay updated.

Believe it or not, installing XP on this laptop was worse -- tried downloading the drivers from nvidia.com, and they didn't work. The Toshiba site only had Vista drivers. Had to go to an old Toshiba UK site to find any. On Linux? Damned-near plug'n'play.

The proof of the free software failure is seen also in the professional world...

And then you go on to list a few apps that you don't like, but which do, indeed, prove that these things exist. Oh, and Maya has a Linux port.

In the software development industry there's not a single decent RAD tool.

Rails.

now prefer the most powerful system for software development: Microsoft Visual Studio.NET.

Which also can only be used reasonably on a machine with 2 gigs of RAM. May as well use Eclipse.

Accounting software? In Linux? There's not software in this area.

For business-level, maybe not. Personal-level, there's Gnucash and KMyMoney.

If Linux is free (in both senses)...Why the high computers-makers don't preinstall it (just a 1% make that)?

Dell does.

He wants to install his webcam without recompiling the kernel.

Literally plugged a webcam into a vanilla Kubuntu, had it running in Kopete with no tweaking whatsoever.

And at that point, you descend completely into a pointless rant, that makes me wonder exactly what Linux people you've been hanging out with -- if, indeed, you know anything about Linux at all. You make some good points, but you lose all credibility when you rant about problems that were fixed 2+ years ago, or actually complain about things that Linux does better than Windows.

Re:Link and Summary

[jambarama]

So what does it do? Well, slideshows. Handy, but not hugely exciting

Not only that, OpenOffice can already export slideshows into .swf files. When .swf support was first added I thought it was so neat I went and created a short animation - flipbook style. As it turns out, OO.org requires you to click, to advance to the next slide - which is the only added feature of salasaga AFAICT.

From the project homepage

An Integrated Development Environment for producing eLearning. Imagine a free, easy to use GUI authoring environment that helps you create visually impressive and actually useful learning material. The short term goal for this project is to provide such an environment, and we're well on the way to a first release for doing that.

To me, this seems to suggest this is designed as an educational tool, not a linux flash replacement. But it fails to show (at least to me) why it is any better than a traditional powerpoint presentation, and what it does that is so special. The homepage also claims Flash has at least one serious design limitation (from my POV) making it nearly useless for comprehensive eLearning but never discloses _what_ that serious limitation is, or how salasaga addresses it (other than making vague future claim about ajax).

Re:What about a player?

[26199]

No idea, but here's one tip: mplayer will play the videos.

Visit the youtube page with a broken flash implementation and it may still download the file to your browser's cache. (It does in opera). Drop to command line, launch mplayer ... yeah, okay, it sucks. But there ya go.

Re:Link and Summary

[chromatic]

Adobe are supporting [Flex] under Linux...

If by supporting you mean "have thrown an alpha or two over the wall for 32-bit x86 processors back in December", then yes, Adobe supports Linux with Flex.

Re:Link and Summary

[bcrowell]

Trying to do OSS development on the Flash platform is kind of a nightmare in terms of licensing.

Re Flex, check out the EULA [adobe.com], e.g., "No Modifications, No Reverse Engineering." The swf spec [adobe.com] says "a. You may not use the Specification in any way to create or develop a runtime, client, player, executable or other program that reads or renders SWF files." If you look at the list of codecs that are supported for Flash, or that may be supported in the near future, it's a mixture of totally proprietary codecs and others that are not quite as proprietary, but are not totally free and open either: mp3, a modified version of h.263, AAC audio, H.264 video, Nelly Moser. The EULA for the player [adobe.com] says you can't modify it or reverse-engineer it, and can't run it on a portable device. As of a year ago, there were also a lot of compatibility and licensing issues with the Version 2 Components.

If you want to do totally OSS development on the flash platform, you can also do it using mtasc, haxe, and gnash. However, you then have to accept that mtasc supports an old version of actionscript, and haxe isn't the same language. I.e., you can't buy a flash book and expect to get the examples working.

Re:What about a player?

[niteice]

Use nspluginwrapper [beauchesne.info]. It takes a little effort to set up but runs Flash and a few other proprietary (32-bit-only) plugins with ease.

Re:What about a player?

[Epistax]

Your comments are well taken, but..

If all open source developers had your attitude, we all wouldn't even have something like a amd64 open source distribution.

I'm not an open source developer, so that's not a fair comparison. I actually did try to help out in a few before but found the politics to be distasteful. My comment about gnash wasn't fair. Gnash is the best thing I've found for amd64. However, it doesn't deserve the pedestal that I've seen people put it on.

Again, my apologies to any gnash developers. It's just not usable yet.

Re:Link and Summary

[markdavis]

OpenOffice already has the ability to export Impress presentations in Flash :)

Re:What about a player?

[Hatta]

Restraining the whims of designers is exactly why the internet is so much better without flash. HTML and CSS are plenty to get your message across to people in an organized and easy to read format. The internet is even better without javascript too.

Re:Here is the truth...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a troll that is posting the same bs on different regional /. he's even translating the same text into various languages. don't feed em and get used to this new mascot