TLF and RSL: SWFs failing to load... How to work around?

[mhulse]

Hello,

 

Long story short:

 

I built and app that loads two SWFs and my app controls the timelines of these loaded SWFs.

 

Yesterday, a client sent me two SWFs that would not load. After a couple hours of investigation, I narrowed the problem down to TLF text fields.

 

I asked for some help on a Flash listserv, and a very nice fellow (Henrik) filled me in on what deal is:

 

Long story short, the TLF library is implemented in actionscript. Said library is hosted on adobe's servers.

 

In order to use the library, the player must have loaded it. The default solution to this used by Flash is to wrap the main movie in a separate preloader movie.

 

This system is called RSL, or runtime shared libraries.

 

The preloader will load the embedded swf file (it uses the DefineBinaryData swf tag for that) and the swz file. This is done because otherwise you would get some nasty verify errors when the movie tries to refer to a class that isn't defined at that point.

 

The effect is that your "main movie" is no longer the main movie, removing luxuries like being able to use the stage before the constructor finishes.

 

It also complicates the code for loading such a movie into another movie. You have to get thru the preloader movie in order to access the main movie.

 

Luckily, this mess is solved for you by Adobe, use the SafeLoader class that they have written. It will pretend to be a normal Loader that loads a normal movie, letting you ignore the RSL preloader stuff.

 

When I removed the TLF text from the client's FLA, the SWF's loaded without any problems.

 

Questions:

 

1. 
   [*:2v89pd6t]Does loaderMax have a method for loading SWFs that use TLF/RSL?
   [*:2v89pd6t]Should I just tell our clients not to use TLF?
   [*:2v89pd6t]Is it just me, or does TLF text seem like more trouble than what it's worth!!! My app needs to control the timeline of the loaded SWFs... So even if I find a solution, I still need the ability to control the child SWFs (weather they are TLF or not); the problem is that I have not idea, and don't care, if the loaded SWFs are TLF or not... I just want things to work!

 

Sorry for my long-winded message. Also, sorry for going off there at the end. TLF text has been driving me up the wall for the last 24 hours.

 

Any tips you could provide would be spectacular!

 

I would much prefer to continue using LoaderMax for my app (vs. SafeLoader)... That's why I was wondering if I should just tell clients to stop using TLF text for text fields?

 

Thanks so much for your help!!!!!

 

Have a great weekend.

 

Cheers,

Micky

[mhulse]

Well, it must be a problem with my code... I created a simple test case, and LoaderMax was able to load the an SWF with TLF text no problems.

 

Sorry to be a bother.

 

Micky