Hi Guys, I've struggled with this idea for a long time and finally started action on this project. I experimenting with building a Dot Net version of Flex which includes rudimentary flash as well. Currently I have a bare bones working prototype using SKIA as the front end demonstrating the concept is doable, but obviously will take a ton of work. I am not implementing everything 100% as I'm making some choices on which flash features are implemented as well as leveraging some of C# language and runtime features, but the idea is most MXML would be able to run with minor modification. I also have an AS3 to C# converter which should assist since the C# syntax is very similar to AS3 but far more powerful.
My main motivation for this project is the direction of the current UI frameworks that support dot not including WinUI, UNO, Avalonia. All of them don't meet my needs in one way or another including full cross platform compatibility, pixel perfect control, and an XML like dialect that is clean, simple, and powerful. If you've ever worked on XAML after working on MXML it's crazy how much more complicated simple things are in XAML and you still don't get full control of what is rendered. I have been coding in flash since Flash 6, Flex since it's inception, and C# since it's launch and I have developed and maintain what is possibly the most complex application ever made in Flex (Dedoose). The only reason I was able to do this is how Flex makes it fast and easy to rapidly develop, iterate, expand, and maintain. I have other avenues going at Dedoose to make a compatible version of Dedoose in one of those newer frameworks but the amount of technical debt we will take on in doing so is something I'm not terribly excited about. While I respect the groups decision with Royale, I believe a Dot Net solution could be far more powerful, far easier to develop & maintain. If anyone is interested in assisting me in this project I will be looking for collaborators with experience in flash, flex, and C#, and potentially be offering pay for this work. Please email me directly if interested, and if I see interest I'll setup a Discord and we can talk and figure out the details. ~ JT
