UPDATE:

I have installed a system that applies a version of the Wordpress styles.css to this flash front end, this means I can use the styles tags in Wordpress to format my text. I will document the steps soon. Finally I can enjoy reading my own blog without the Typographer in me cringing!

I am currently working on a better way to keep some of the formatting done in Wordpress in the final display in AS3. These are the methods I propose:

1. In AS3 load in an external .css fileThis file contains the similar style/class tags as used in Wordpress. Apply this to the final text. There will still be some hacking of the content to get the span or paragraph tags in the simple form that flash accepts.

2. Minimize the usage of tags in WordpressThis means removing most of the extraneous tags and trying to keep the html in Wordpress as clean as possible but keep a range of useful CSS tags (hopefully expandable).

3. Apply a better solution to maintain the space white space and line returnsFlash has a different way it interprets all of the various line returns and white space. Actually every rendering and text formatting system has its own unique methods.

4. It must be expandable to include the media inserts.What is the use of using a flash front end if you cannot view FLV and images. The image insert should be easy as you can add the images into the html, I will need to experiment with the video objects to come up with an appropriate solution. My initial thoughts are to break up the text field at the point and insert your own FLV object (sounds like more security issues if there are outside the host domain).

Hopefully this will be an easy replicable solution for others as well.