Additional interactivity has been added in V4.0 of the SWF format. This is given by the use of edit boxes offering the end users a way to enter text as if the SWF movie was in fact an interactive form.
The text is defined in a variable (accessible in action scripts). It can be dynamically assigned and retrieved. It is legal to have an empty string as the variable name (not dynamically accessible).
Since version 8, the text drawn by a DefineEditText tag can be tweaked by adding a CSMTextSettings tag.
The f_edit_word_wrap flag will be set to true (1) in order to have words going beyond the ...
Moved the monolithic documentation to a multi-page hierarchical document that includes everything we had before plus many links, many terms attached to all pages (tags, English words.) And revision of most of the text for better English and clarification in some places.
Strengthen the formatting with CCK fields so all declarations look alike.
Broken up the actions from one large table to a set of pages.
Started work on the Load() feature of the SSWF library. This helped fixing several small mistakes in the documentation.
Fixed the ...
Edges are used to define a shape vector based and also coordinates where images need to be drawn. The edges are always coordinates from where ever your last point was to where ever you want the next point to be (a little like a turtle in LOGO).
The width of the line is in TWIPS (1/20th of a pixel).
The f_start_cap_style and f_end_cap_style can be:
Round is the default, the way line caps looked before version 8. No Cap means that nothing is added at the tip of the line. This means the line stops exactly where you say it should end. The Square Cap is like the No Cap, but it has the cap which is about Width / 2.
The f_join_style can be:
The array of line styles starts with a counter. When DefineShape is used, the counter can be any value from 0 (no style) to 255. When DefineShape2 or DefineShape3 are used, the value 255 is reserved so you can declare more than 255 styles (up to 65535.)
Note that the line & fill bits are declared as "unsigned char" because they will always be aligned. The proper definition would probably be a bit field though.
Fonts uses this declaration. It does not include any style (fill or line) definitions. The drawing will use fill 0 when the inside of the shape should not be drawn and 1 when it is to be filled. The line style should not be defined.
This is an interesting concept: have a tag that can clear everything that we have done so far and start over. If you have a single time line, this is certainly useful. Since version 3, however, we get the DefineSprite tag that has a very similar capability (except that it does not have the ability to delete anything from memory, this comes in version 5 with access to external animations that can be created and thrown away dynamically.)
It is common to use the DefineFont tag in order to create an array of shapes later re-used to draw strings of text on the screen. Note that the definition of the shape within a font is limited since it can't include any specific fill and/or line style. Also, each shape is assumed to be defined within a 1024x1024 square. This square is called the EM Square. Fig 1. below shows you the EM Square and how it is used. The characters baseline can be placed anywhere within the EM Square (it certainly can be outside too if you wish?!?).
These are probably the most important tags in this reference. They are used to define a shape using Bezier curves and lines with different styles. The DefineShape of V1.0 is usually enough unless you need a large number of styles or you want to specify colors with an alpha channel (RGBA).
The DefineMorphShape and DefineMorphShape2 can be used to render an intermediate shape between two defined shapes. All the points and control points of both shapes must match. This is because the rendering of the morphing shapes is just an interpolation between both shapes points and control points ...