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Comment by ciroduran | Hacker News Reader

Notice that it's still very much possible to produce SWF files with languages like Haxe http://haxe.org/, and there are frameworks that mimic the Flash drawing API like OpenFL https://www.openfl.org/, there is (or was) a lot of interesting stuff like that happening around.

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Flash editor was the magic

Indeed, Flash UI is really its strenght, the way to draw and manipulate curves, I don't think I've seen anything like it after that, although illustrating is not my trade. However, it is possible to do cool procedurally generated stuff with the drawing API, or use plain normal bitmap graphics to do things.

Adobe’s pen tool across all titles is second to none. There is so much value in just that one tool done right.

This is very true.

I far prefer the pen tool in Macromedia Freehand/MX, to say nothing of the other drawing modes which it offered (and which Adobe later copied).

I might still have an InDesign Subscription if Adobe had just rolled all of Freehand's capabilities into it --- instead, I keep a Windows computer for it and a stylus (despite Windows having crippled stylus functionality in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update) --- which reminds me, stylus usage in Waterfox broke again and I have to look up how to fix it (again).

There is Wick Editor (which I mentioned elsethread)

https://www.wickeditor.com/#/

Unfortunately, it's been abandoned for a while now.

That is unfortunate.

Other similar projects?

Another reason for me to knuckle down and write my own (programmable) drawing program....

There are some forks of it that seem more recent:

1. Candlestick https://github.com/Candlestickers/Candlestick

2. StickmanRed’s Fork https://github.com/StickmanRed/wick-editor

3. This brand new fork: https://forum.wickeditor.com/t/started-my-own-fork-luke-tool...

And, of course, Ruffle[1][2] to play them.

[1] https://ruffle.rs/

[2] https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/

I am using Ruffle to keep my games playable, but AS3 support is still getting there. AS2 support is awesome.

Can't modern Flash compile to HTML5? Can the open alternatives also do that?

I wish SWF became a common HTML5 transpile format.

No, it cannot. It can sort of compile some animations (with the libary EaselJS), but you have to use javascript instead of actionscript - but it is really not the same like it was in flash. Basically it does not work for me and I abandoned Adobe Animate and still looking for replacement of the lost Garden of Flash Utopia.

HTML 5 offers nothing to match Flash capabilities.

Perhaps you could render to Canvas/WebGL/WebGPU, but you still need to reproduce the entire engine there.

Flash required a browser plugin to work. It was handling video and 3D animation a decade before the <video> and <canvas> elements were added to the HTML5 spec.

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