Re: [Gnash-dev] Character definitions design

[Udo Giacomozzi]

Hello Sandro,

Monday, June 25, 2007, 10:45:29 PM, you wrote:
>> >After all, a definition is always in memory anyway (in the
>> >CharacterDictionary)

What about externally loaded movies ( loadMovie() )? Shouldn't the
definition be removed when that movie is unloaded? In that case
definitions would still need the GC or be at least ref-counted.


SS> Well, this hierarchy could be better handled at the top-level
SS> (character_def, swf_character_def, dynamic_character_def).
SS> But I'd still like the "render an instance, not a character" more.

This would mean duplicating much code or a big redesign. As said, the
triangulating render handlers (OpenGL) need to convert the Flash
shapes to a simple triangles mesh. This mesh is stored in the
character *definition* because it is unrelated to matrix
transformations.

Moving the mesh data to the *instance* would mean re-calculating the
same data for each instance (overkill for non-dynamic shapes). The
(yet unused) renderer cache (which is part of the *definition*) could
be a solution for this but that's not much different than the current
design.

For AGG it wouldn't be such a big deal as it accesses the original
flash shapes and the source of these shapes could be abstracted. At
the other hand it probably will make caching/optimizations more
difficult later.

In any case, the triangulating code and data is deeply nested with the
character definitions, so it's hard to change this.

Udo