The Flash animation and movie player Gnash can be ported to RISC OS, it was shown this weekend. John-Mark Bell of the NetSurf team produced on Saturday a set of patches allowing the open source Flash player to be built for the RISC OS desktop.It proves that users could soon watch the latest web animations and shiny gimmicks on their RISC OS computers, as pictured here. Releasing his Gnash work for other programmers to finish off, he described the port as "very tentative".
John-Mark previously released a 32bit compatible version of Leo Smiers's Flash browser plugin, which can handle animations using Adobe Flash version 3 features and some from version 4. In comparison, Gnash can play media files with Flash version 7 features, while the latest official Microsoft Windows player from Adobe can handle up to version 9. The port uses a simple non-accelerated frame-buffer to render its graphics, although it could later use OpenGL, in theory.
The port is not optimised, and needs bringing up to a usable speed. Sound is also disabled for now, and the software runs as a standalone application rather than as a browser plugin. It's also prone to crashing while taking out other applications or the whole machine itself; these faults are being investigated. John-Mark said he would prefer to concentrate on boost.org-related work and bringing NetSurf up to version 1, adding that the Gnash port could be an ideal project for another coder to pick up and finish off.
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