Extension up for contract ....

There are many extension ideas to explore, and that means we won't run out of them ;)

Now that Sphax has Vectors in progress and may even develop them farther in the future, we have a few areas to work on that may be important. ChrisB may handle what to do about controls and updates, later on.

For now, I would like to kick off Cartoovie in stages. Off the record, I find it rather bothersome to accomplish presentations and cartoons/movies at this stage. I voted for removal of the old timeline and step editor because I feel that a better solution is needed.

As I have illustrated, the Cartoovie Project has several aspects to it. We can start with something that works along the lines of 3EE's Modifier object.

There is no hurry to get on this project. Anybody who may have the time in the future and the skills to do it may consider it. Keep in mind that there will be a visual aspect of the project.

Here are the initial criteria:

The extension should be designed with expansion and connectivity in mind.

1) The extension will record, (during runtime) play, stop, pause, rewind, forward, any object that is associated with it via an action. You can pick a spot via time, or synchronization to edit, or start from.

2) The author will have control, (via the kind of dialogs that Jack is using) to decide which aspects of an object will be recorded and played back.

3) The recordings should be able to be saved and loaded. What is most important is that the data it generates is a compact as possible. You should be able to run this for hours and not generate an unreasonably huge file. That means that, if nothing is happening, the object records a time marker until something happens. I hope that is clear. Possibly, encryption may be an element here, but size and speed are more important.

Editing the data may or may not be an issue. It depends on how fine the author should be able to tune and adjust a recording.

That's pretty much it. I would want this to be thought-out well before proceeding, especially in relation to other objects/features that will make this a powerful suite.

One example is that, if you are recording what user actions and events are effecting the object, you want to be able to control that. So, after an inital record in a running app, you may want to have a "MyRecordingSlot" or "MyObject" is playing, and even be able to turn on and off what is recorded/edited in the next "dub".

The Modifier object also had a "parent/child" attachment feature which was handy, but I am not sure if that fits into this particular object or not.