It's funny you mention that. In flash, text can be formatted with simple HTML markups for styling (tags like <bold>, etc..). It also uses CSS styling for components, although it's a fairly limited form of CSS.
The AIR runtime already has an HTML component*. All Adobe would need to do is stick it into the flash runtime and you could make it work with Flex :)
"Hello, you have an old version of Adobe Flash Player. To use iPaper (and lots of other stuff on the web) you need to get the latest Flash player."
I guess they are trying to say, "It's not just us that wants to depend on a big chunk of proprietary software! It's EVERYONE!"
Incidentally, since I removed Flash, the only "problem" is that ads don't work. (YouTube videos can be played externally, and the ads inside them obviously go away when you do that.)
All in all, Scribd should really degrade to HTML for those without Flash. Either generate images with gv, or extract the text like Google does.
I am, I suspect, much older than most HN readers (early 30s) and I remember a thing called RTF. It amuses me to see it constantly reinvented. And not improved.
Games? Flash provides a flexible, fast format that makes game design very easy.
The best-of-the-best Flash games really thrive because they're so compatible with things. Kottke mentioned an excellent one yesterday: http://www.playauditorium.com/
That said: Flash is not meant for text. It's overkill. It's like using a tank to scare kids off your lawn.
It's not that simple. You need a format that can represent any kind of document. Good luck trying to convert a powerpoint with complex shapes and background images into a RTF. There are only two formats that can really do that, while being viewed inside a browser - swf and images.
Nobody is stopping you from using latex,beamer,and emacs and taking a weekend to finish your slides. But if you want something done in fifteen minutes that looks good, use powerpoint.
RTF is a good format for editable documents, but it's not such a good format for documents that need to look exactly the same on all platforms. The format that PDF actually reinvents is Postscript.
