[TxMt] Flex 2 Bundle

[Joshua Scott Emmons]

> Calling all flex/flash/as developers:
> We need to come up with a unified bundle design for these  
> technologies.

I couldn't agree more! Sorry for my (eerily similar) post over on  
textmate-dev [1]. I didn't know this conversation was happening over  
here.

[1]: http://tinyurl.com/yrdwmd

> AS3 bundle:
> Should contain ActionScript 3 language syntax, snippets, etc. that are
> relevant only to AS3 as a language.  (just as the ruby bundle only  
> contains
> ruby stuff and not rails stuff).

Completely agree. Though don't forget support for E4X. Its syntax is  
so interwoven with AS3's that I think it'd be hard to implement that  
as a separate bundle.

> Flex2 bundle:
> Should contain any extensions to the AS3 bundle that are relevant  
> to flex.
> Should contain MXML language syntax, snipptets, etc.
> Should contain MXML and AS3 templates for new applications and  
> components.
> Should contain commands to build components and applications using  
> the flex2
> framework standalone lib.  ("FlexMate")

This would also seem the proper place to  extend CSS bundle to deal  
with Flex-only styles. And I'd make a point of ensuring that whatever  
features/grammars are added, they're added on top of text.xml. MXML  
is so strongly XML based, it'd be a shame if we threw out all of XML  
bundle's useful stuff.

Also, I'm a little weary of calling this bundle "Flex2" as what we  
are really editing is MXML files. We don't call HTML bundle "Web Page  
bundle", after all. But that's a completely semantic argument, and I  
am willing to surrender.

Allen writes:
> And now Simon Gregory committed an AS3 + Flex2 bundle.

I would vote strongly against wrapping these things into a single  
bundle. For one thing, AS3 is going to be very popular as the basis  
for Javascript2/ECMAScript4 and will likely be used extensively in  
future non-Flex projects by Adobe. It will need to evolve on its own  
without being coupled to Flex. And who knows what the future holds  
for MXML with Apollo on the horizon. It's better, IMHO, to keep  
things focused and flexible. Simon: How feasible is it to break this  
bundle into two parts? Will that put us ahead or behind of where we  
are with the current stand-alone bundles?

It sounds like most of us on on the same page, here. I think it'd be  
nice if we could agree on a single AS3 and a single Flex bundle to  
focus our efforts on so we have something to congregate around.  
Nominations?


Cheers,
-Joshua Emmons