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Flash (SWF) support

Ploticus version 2.11+ supports the shockwave flash (SWF) output format. Use the -swf command line option. SWF support is only available when included at compile time and requires the ming library (see build instructions and the Makefile). Ming version 0.2a was used during the original development effort.

Fonts

Environment variable SWF_FONTS_DIR must be defined to hold the full path name of a directory containing .fdb font files. The ploticus SWF driver expects font names to be a single token; font names containing embedded whitespace should be renamed (or soft linked) to a name containing no embedded whitespace. More info on fonts

Output files

Output files will be named .swf by default. These files can be viewed directly using a browser that has a flash plugin.

Example

The example below was created by issuing this command: pl -swf stock.htm
stock.swf
stock ploticus script

Here's the embed HTML:

<embed src="../gallery/stock.swf" 
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" 
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height=300 width=500>
</embed> 

Bugs / not supported:

line dash styles

clickable regions / click maps / mouseover tooltip text bubbles

some color change issues have been occasionally noted

fontnames having embedded spaces don't work - rename your font file or make a soft link

The SWF driver does not release memory correctly when there are multiple "jobs" per OS process, as might be done when using the libploticus API. Still, it seems to produce usable .swf results in my tests of about 20 jobs in one OS process. (scg - May 12, 2004)

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Bill Traill ( bill@traill.demon.co.uk ) for initiating ploticus SWF support and writing the ploticus SWF driver.