[osflash] Reverse Engineering Adobe's FLA Format

[Merrill, Jason]

Here is an article on Flash moving to an XML format:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/03/flash_moving_to.html


Jason Merrill
Bank of America  
GT&O and Risk L&LD Solutions Design & Development 
eTools & Multimedia 

Bank of America Flash Platform Developer Community


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>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: osflash-bounces at osflash.org 
>>[mailto:osflash-bounces at osflash.org] On Behalf Of Keith Peters
>>Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 8:08 AM
>>To: Open Source Flash Mailing List
>>Subject: Re: [osflash] Reverse Engineering Adobe's FLA Format
>>
>>Flash CS4 will have an XFL import / export feature. It isn't 
>>meant to replace FLA, but will allow for some portability, 
>>source control, and maybe some third party tools that can 
>>create XFL, which can then be imported to create an FLA. It 
>>wouldn't surprise me if this eventually took over from FLA in 
>>the future.
>>
>>So reverse engineering FLA doesn't seem like a great 
>>investment of effort.
>>
>>Keith Peters
>>kp at bit-101.com
>>
>>
>>
>>On Mar 19, 2008, at 7:46 AM, Chris Spencer wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Does anyone know of any work done on reverse engineering the FLA 
>>> format? Whenever I Google this topic, all I find are SWF 
>>decompilers.
>>>
>>> I've been poking around the format, and I already know it's a basic 
>>> Microsoft OLE package, with separate files  for project properties, 
>>> the stage, and each shape. The properties file is mostly plaintext, 
>>> with some binary used to denote the length of the property 
>>> names/values. The stage and object files look like they'll 
>>be harder 
>>> to crack since they're almost entirely binary. However, by 
>>comparing 
>>> files after toggling values in Adobe's IDE, I've found where 
>>> properties like an object's fill color are stored.
>>>
>>> There's a lot more work to do, so if there's no prior work done in 
>>> this area, would anyone like to collaborate with me in reverse 
>>> engineering this format? I've encapsulated what I know so far in a 
>>> Python script, which I'll release as open source when complete.
>>>
>>> I've also heard rumors on blogs that Adobe might be 
>>replacing FLA with 
>>> an XML equivalent. Does anyone think there's any truth to this? As 
>>> much as I'd like to see it happen, I'm not holding my breath.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> osflash mailing list
>>> osflash at osflash.org
>>> http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
>>
>>
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