====== NSPluginWrapper Happenings ======

Hi, here a few updates concerning [[en:projects:nspluginwrapper]].

**Project commodities.** Many people asked for usual project commodities like mailing-lists and a bug reporting system. I don't want to host that myself because that would require users to create yet another account elsewhere. SourceForge or Savannah-based systems don't suit me because //(i)// I don't like the interface and //(ii)// I want to keep the SVN tree hosted on my server at this time (which Savannah wouldn't allow, AFAIK). So, where can I host the project?

  * The __ideal__ solution would be Mozilla.org since it is OS and distribution neutral and provides a Bugzilla. I don't know yet if this interests them. Hey, are there Mozilla people reading? ;-)

  * The __practical__ solution would be to accept the kind offer from Red Hat / Fedora: [[https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/web/|Fedora Hosted Projects]] Trac. It could be available immediately. However, I don't know if other people (distributors, *BSD people) would get frustrated by that or not (politics is always troublesome).

**Standalone Player.** Lately, I was working on a standalone NPAPI plugins player. The initial goal for that was to allow Flash games to be played without a complete web browser as the front-end. The syntax is actually what is used in ''<embed>'' tags. e.g. ''npplayer src=~/flash/bloxorz.swf width=640 height=480''. The term "player" can sound crappy, this is because "viewer" is already used by the "client", aka the program that actually executes the plugin.

**OpenGL Rendering.** What can you do when you have a standalone player? Well, apart from investigating some bugs, it can be used to experiment with... OpenGL rendering. I am not using ''texture-from-pixmap'' because of some other problems independent from me, so I am using an ugly hack that only works with Flash Player 9 at this time. The other benefit is that cursor changes are monitored and handled gracefully. The OpenGL back-end is using [[http://www.clutter-project.org/|Clutter]].

Now, you probably wonder: "what the hell is that useful for?". Simple answer: initially allow Flash content to be played and interacted with in a Clutter+WebKit-based browser.

Here is the obligatory screenshot for the Clutter-based standalone NPAPI plugins player.
{{common:nspluginwrapper:images:npw.opengl.flash.magic-pen.png?512x384}}

Movies are also available to show off: [[this>files/nspluginwrapper/videos/npplayer.magic-pen.mpg|Magic Pen]] (reflection), [[this>files/nspluginwrapper/videos/npplayer.bloxorz.mpg|Bloxorz]] (scaled), [[this>files/nspluginwrapper/videos/npplayer.webkit-clutter.mpg|WebKit/Clutter]] ("complex" application like the Google Video player in Flash).

**Roadmap.** Due to recent developments, some major changes area also necessary. Here is a rough roadmap of the events. Note that I don't mention the dates because I don't know them yet... At least, I am now clear on the versioning that I promise to improve!
  * Version 1.0: based on current 0.9.9x branch + some other bug fixes only
  * Version 1.2: based on current trunk + Red Hat changes + standalone plugin player based on Gtk.
  * Version 2.0: OpenGL rendering support + full SDK to allow third party programs (Gtk or Clutter-based) to embed NPAPI plugins. This will require some changes not suitable for 1.x series.

{{tag>linux projects nspluginwrapper}}