Re: xAP-485 Bridge Software

[Stuart Booth]

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003 19:34:54 -0000, "Paul Barrett"
<<a
href="/group/xAP_developer/post?postID=xNzcNVgkOJ08AMNOG65yyJb55n0omUpx7sTFgWWZ_DG-p16mUq0a9PTDqQ79UMK_1cp8ZnokMvhQZMdLpXsl">pbarrett@r...</a>>
wrote:

>Which of the plugins would you suggest to convert as a good example and
to
>allow me to get to grips with how it all works.

Well, the OnScreenDisplay ones are very simple, although I keep adding
extra features to them which seems to make them grow.

On this page:

<<a href="http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=29";>http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&amp;d_op=viewdownload&amp;cid=29\
</a>>

You'll find the source code for each plugin. I'd go for the
NewEmailOSD one. The current one on the site is way simpler than my
development build here which I haven't uploaded yet.

All that does is listen out for Mail.Incoming.New e-mail notifications
as input and sends out xAP-OSD.Display messages as output. Very simple
and fairly compact.

You will need to get a Plugin Runtime application down too. I'd
suggest just using the compiled C# versions I've already built as
there should not be a need for you to make your own as VB.net apps.

<<a href="http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=28";>http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&amp;d_op=viewdownload&amp;cid=28\
</a>>

Choose the Console one, and you should only need to drop your VB .DLL
file into the same directory (or into the Plugins sub-directory to be
more exact).

If you want to run the whole shebang under the debugger you'll need to
download the source for the xAPConsole plugin runtime from here and
add it to your main solution file:

<<a href="http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=31";>http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&amp;d_op=viewdownload&amp;cid=31\
</a>>

And then you need to do some diddling around with the projects for
both your VB plugin DLL and the C# EXE so that the build dependencies
are correct and the C# EXE can find your VB DLL when it starts.

I suggest we delve into that when you need it. I've got a setup that
works quite well here.

>Do you think it would be a good idea to implement my xAP-485 Bridge as
a
>plugin?

After all the work I've just described above you might be wondering if
it's worth the effort?

The reason I started this plugin architecture was that each of my
xAPps (and all the Samples) had the exact same UI 'shell'. This meant
if I fixed a bug or added a new feature in one, I had to go through
all the others changing them too.

But the main reason was that I wanted Windows Service and GUI versions
of these applications too. That's 3 * the work described in the
previous paragraph.

Now I have one 'runtime' application that is decoupled from the plugin
DLL itself. So, if you wrote a VB xAPFramework plugin, you can
immediately take advantage of my Windows Service runtime ... and the
GUI version (when it appears).

In the shorter term I think you'd probably be better off not using all
of this. There's a fair bit of code to learn for one thing. But more
importantly you may have a completely different User Interface concept
to me.

So I would probably recommend not putting your effort into the stuff I
described earlier until such time as you find yourself doing the same
as I did with the similar code across multiple applications.

S
--
Stuart Booth <<a
href="/group/xAP_developer/post?postID=KHrZGlo8HeEg45NFK5Oi8n73Gu91hLyjGI46jWIl0K7y2EyiHwRkyYmMJOGfG2zYrKHeTfoX-LMoUQGFRQ">stuart@x...</a>>
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