Re: [Gnash-dev] Re: Configure the browser plugin to not print messages to stdout/stderr?

[Rob Savoye]

On 12/20/09 11:26, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:

> I suspect you are confused by the difference with the stable release 
> in debian (Lenny), and what is available in other versions of
> debian. Gnash 0.8.6 is available in Debian, in the unstable
> distribution and is also currently in the testing distribution which
> represent what hopefully will be included in the next stable release
> (Squeeze).

  Ah yes, stable to the point of unusability on the Desktop. :-(

> The version in Lenny will probably not be changed, while important 
> bugs might be fixed using backported patches or home made bug fixes.

  Which is nearly impossible for Gnash, often bugs get fixed by heavy
code refactoring...

> Not sure if that is possible.  But we could do this in Debian Edu, 
> which is based on Debian Lenny with a few updated packages to get
> very important fixes in.  Are you interested in maintaining gnash in
> Debian Edu/Lenny for a few years (until Debian Lenny no longer have
> security support), fixing bugs and security issues?

  Aren't we already doing that ? I just checked in a fix (#11723), which
primarily fixes all the problems with the deb packages. I cleaned up all
the dependencies, till they all can be installed in parallel, mozilla,
klash, and konqueror too. I built new x86-karmic packages, now building
the other platforms.

> This is what we did for Debian Edu/Etch, as gnash was not really fit 
> for general use.  Currently we are working on the Debian Edu/Lenny 
> release, and here we have Gnash 0.8.4 which seem to be working for 
> several sites, and thus might be better than providing no Flash 
> implementation in the default installation and only document how 
> schools can install Adobe Flash.

  It seems better to use a newer release. "stable" in this case means
not keeping up to date with the web. Ubuntu keeps up to date with Gnash,
and it hasn't ever been a problem. And definetely more sites work now
than did for 0.8.4.

> The problematic sites I have seen and tend to visit to check the 
> curren status is <URL: http://www.steinalder.no/flashsite.htm >,
> where Gnash earlier failed to wrap the text, leading to only the
> first words of the history from the stone age to show up in the
> browser and

  As I can't read Norwegian, I can't tell which is the history link. But
everything I clicked on seemed to work. There was a lot of work done to
Text fields, text formatting, etc this summer, so maybe it's all fixed.

> <URL: http://met.hia.no/ > which only report an error instead of 
> showing the weather status, and finally <URL: http://www.vg.no/ > 
> which have an insane amount of flash ads which really should not bog 
> the machine down as much as it does.

  Hard to tell, I use AdBlock. :-) The photo galleries and the other
stuff I randomly tried all worked fine.

        - rob -