adobe flash opened up, does this affect rockbox?

[petvirus]

just read this:
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/04/adobe-drops-lic.html

does this mean that rockbox can now get a flash player?

[LambdaCalculus]

Only if someone wants to work on one.

[petvirus]

do i understand correctly, that in order to get flash on any given supported player, one would need to write the code for that cpu, or can generic code be written and then ported to each player with "less" work then writing it from scratch?

[Strife89]

just read this:
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/04/adobe-drops-lic.html

does this mean that rockbox can now get a flash player?

Not necessarily. Flash is still resource-intensive, and it will take a good deal of work just to port a Flash player to Rockbox to begin with.

While this is not an absolute, the most certain way to see a Flash player on Rockbox is to port it yourself. But even then, there are other obstacles to get pass before it has a shot at showing up in SVN.

[karashata]

do i understand correctly, that in order to get flash on any given supported player, one would need to write the code for that cpu, or can generic code be written and then ported to each player with "less" work then writing it from scratch?

Most of Rockbox's code is written in C, with assembly thrown in where it marks a definite improvement in performance and bin size, if I'm understanding things correctly.  I would imagine if you could write a flash player in C, the cross compilers for each target's processor would compile it such that it would be understood by that target's processor.  If you have any knowledge of assembly code for the various architectures the DAPs Rockbox supports, it may not hurt to use it where appropriate, if it helps improve the player's performance and/or reduces the bin size (without compromising performance).

[gevaerts]

That website says that documentation about a "porting layer" is available. That seems to imply that the entire code is almost certainly not compatible with the GPL, so it can't be legally made into a rockbox plugin.

[petvirus]

but illegally 

there are many days i wish i knew C instead of java, and this is one of them

[LambdaCalculus]

but illegally 

Absolutely not!

[safetydan]

There's already two open source implementations of Flash out there. Take a look at Gnash and Swfdec. Either of those would be vastly more suitable for porting to Rockbox.