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Friday
Nov112005

flash, linux, fonts

OpenLaszlo/Flash is more write-once-run-anywhere, more zero-install, than anything else I've developed in. However, the linux flash player has some problems which affect Laszlo Mail:


  • There's no 64-bit flash player for linux. If you're running a 64-bit machine, and running Firefox as a 64-bit app, you're just hosed. You'll only see a blank page. We need to add a check for that, somehow. But really, if you're running a 64-bit linux desktop, you're probably a pine devotee, or dyed-in-the-wool thunderbird user. Hell, you're probably a thunderbird contributor if you're running deskt 64-bit linux.

  • We embed the true-type for Futura, but we expect client machines to have Verdana. If Verdana isn't present, we request sans, but in certain configurations, the linux flash player displays a serifed font instead. Looks weird and bad; it's a linux flash player bug. Generally, text rendering in flash/linux is not as lovingly massaged as text rendering in windows and mac os x.


  • The linux distributions I've been playing with (Mandrake 10.2, Mandriva 2006) don't ship with flash player; you have to install it yourself.

  • Only Flash 7 is available for linux; no flash player 8, which is sad, because flash player 8 is way faster.

  • Opera? Oh please. Most of our stuff works in Opera on Linux. I developed in it for a while. There are cetain things which don't work in Opera on Linux, but I'm not sure what they are.

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