opcode question

[Roland Zwaga]

Hey Max,

I have a small question, I was reading this article:

http://www.unitzeroone.com/blog/2009/05/22/another-scream-on-flash-alchemy-memory-and-compilers/

And Ralph Hauwert complains that you're unable to use the new Alchemy
opcodes in regular actionscript because the compiler doesn't support
them. Since you're pushing opcodes directly into the player, would it
be possible to use Loom to achieve what this guy was trying?

I'm just thinking out loud here without any real technical insight,
but do you get my drift?

cheers,

Roland

[Maxim Porges]

Hey Roland,

Hmm, from what I can see the issue is not that the opcodes would not
be supported by the runtime, but that you can't easily access them
directly from ActionScript at runtime without using the __asm
function, which it seems only the asc.jar compiler supports (the
author states that compc doesn't respect this capability). It looks
like he got around this limitation by constructing his own SWF and
filling the DoABC tags with the bytecode he needed.

Loom actually works the same way; it doesn't push opcodes directly in
to the player per se, it constructs a dummy SWF wrapper, fills that
with proxy opcodes, and pushes the SWF in to the player.

However, this has got me thinking about the ability to push ABC
blocks in to the player at runtime - if there is a way to do that
synchronously using some of the hooks for alchemy, it would make
synchronous creation of proxies a lot easier. This might be a good
discussion item for the Tamarin list, since if one compiler supports
it, I don't know why the other wouldn't be able to with ease. Thanks
for the link!

- max

[Roland Zwaga]

Well, I read in the comments of that blog post that there is a lot of
frustration
about the existing actionscript compilers, I really hope Adobe will
invest more time
in it and add some decent optimizing etc. Right now a lot of speed
issues seem to
have their cause in a bad compiler, which is quite sad...
Anyways, glad to have inspired you a little :) How is Loom coming
along? Have you
found a little time for it lately?
Spring Actionscript's roadmap has AOP features planned in the post
version 1.0 stage,
so it'll be a while. But when we reach that I really hope you've been
able to complete
Loom since it'll probably form the basis of the AOP features. (Since
there is no other alternative
library right now hehe).

Anyways, good luck!

Roland

On Jul 6, 5:58 pm, Maxim Porges <maxim.por...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Roland,
>
>         Hmm, from what I can see the issue is not that the opcodes would not  
> be supported by the runtime, but that you can't easily access them  
> directly from ActionScript at runtime without using the __asm  
> function, which it seems only the asc.jar compiler supports (the  
> author states that compc doesn't respect this capability). It looks  
> like he got around this limitation by constructing his own SWF and  
> filling the DoABC tags with the bytecode he needed.
>
>         Loom actually works the same way; it doesn't push opcodes directly in  
> to the player per se, it constructs a dummy SWF wrapper, fills that  
> with proxy opcodes, and pushes the SWF in to the player.
>
>         However, this has got me thinking about the ability to push ABC  
> blocks in to the player at runtime - if there is a way to do that  
> synchronously using some of the hooks for alchemy, it would make  
> synchronous creation of proxies a lot easier. This might be a good  
> discussion item for the Tamarin list, since if one compiler supports  
> it, I don't know why the other wouldn't be able to with ease. Thanks  
> for the link!
>
> - max
>
> On Jul 6, 2009, at 4:06 AM, Roland Zwaga wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hey Max,
>
> > I have a small question, I was reading this article:
>

> >http://www.unitzeroone.com/blog/2009/05/22/another-scream-on-flash-al...

[Maxim Porges]

Yeah, the inconsistencies in the compilers are a little odd. Now that
the ECMA 4 standard is dead, they might as well make a single compiler
to rule them all.

Loom is still sitting dormant awaiting my attention, but I imagine
I'll have it all together by the time you guys need it.

- max

[Roland Zwaga]

> Yeah, the inconsistencies in the compilers are a little odd. Now that  
> the ECMA 4 standard is dead, they might as well make a single compiler  
> to rule them all.

I think it'd be pretty hilarious if someone built an actionscript
compiler in C# to be honest :)

> Loom is still sitting dormant awaiting my attention, but I imagine  
> I'll have it all together by the time you guys need it.

That's all I wanted to hear hehe :)
Thanks a lot mate, good luck!