Read text back thats inside a swf?

Hiya,
Here's a question that i have been working on for weeks without any luck, Basically i need a way to read the text thats in textboxes within a swf (not dynamically from actionscript, if only it was that easy lol,the text has to be extracted from swf's directly)

I have tried openswf.org and although its possible to get details such as the font type etc using thier script, the actual text isnt something thats available. Anyone out there knows anything about how to read the text from inside a swf I would be extremly grateful if you could post a reply or email [email protected] .


Thanks in advance,
Will(rawebd)

Hi rawebd,

its actually a two-step process. The font gets copied partially to the swf, with a table that relates characters to indexes in the glyph table. Then the actual text only uses these indexes. Using a swf tool of any sort, you have to find the DefineFont or DefineFont2 bit to get the character list, and then the DefineText bit to extract the glyph indexes and translate them into character codes.

I have a program that gives me enough detail of swf's to do that manually, but I would probably wrap a a perl script around it or even write a rogram specific to the goal if it comes to lots of text.

Just an aside comment: the above-mentioned character table is not required technically, so it is just a convenience feature.A "swf optimizer" might just throw it out

Musicman

You can't really get a definate string unless you also parse the actionscript inside the SWF (in case of many of the "more advanced" sites which store TXT in databases or text files)...that could be a pain.

--Jesse

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Musicman

Hi rawebd,

its actually a two-step process. The font gets copied partially to the swf, with a table that relates characters to indexes in the glyph table. Then the actual text only uses these indexes. Using a swf tool of any sort, you have to find the DefineFont or DefineFont2 bit to get the character list, and then the DefineText bit to extract the glyph indexes and translate them into character codes.

I have a program that gives me enough detail of swf's to do that manually, but I would probably wrap a a perl script around it or even write a rogram specific to the goal if it comes to lots of text.

Just an aside comment: the above-mentioned character table is not required technically, so it is just a convenience feature.A "swf optimizer" might just throw it out

Musicman

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Musicman, I realize this post is ancient but I am now confronted with the same problem. Is there any chance you can expand on what you wrote and point me in the direction of any resources? Much obliged.

Hi,

one part of the job is my swf analyzer - you can find it at www.fontimages.org.uk
Now this might output

Code:

---

tag 10 stagDefineFont at file offset 26
font 1: 4 glyphs
0, offs 8:
move 469 -580
fillstyle0 1
linestyle 0
line 9,-15

---

here all outline data of the font is shown
This would be followed by a section

Code:

---

tag 13 stagDefineFontInfo at file offset 582
font 1: BlueStone ANSI
0: B
1: e
2: l
3: u

---

and yet later by a section

Code:

---

tag 11 stagDefineText at file offset 701
text 4
rect 1.75,16.95 120.25,47.10
translate 0 0
rgb 0 0 0
dy 931
font 1 size 960
2 chars:
code u dx 742
code e dx 742

---

So you have a fragment with just the two characters "u" and "e"
Note that the swf analyzer does not know much about unicode

Musicman

Musicman