RE: xplHal - unknown vendor

[John B]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Lowe" <<a
href="/group/ukha_xpl/post?postID=tAYILvlwkh7Grg1kFfBWzyF4s_KrQlzj9SWZyRdwg0yTY45NwjE7IMW-hLPbJWqMRs_xxr_GFdDc9ays">ian@w...</a>>
Sent: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 16:53:23 -0000
To: <<a
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Subject: RE: [ukha_xpl] xplHal - unknown vendor

> To be recognised as a vendor, you need to:
>
> 1) get a Vendor ID - that's as easy as saying "can I have a
vendor ID
> please" ;) (if you have one already - oops - it aint on my list :
)

Or if you're just starting out, and don't plan to make your work generally
available, you can use the personal vendor ID "my".
Though as Ian says, it's not exactly difficult to register a vendor ID :-)

> 2) construct an xml fragment for your device (best way is to grab
Steve
> or John B's as they are well populated, with an example of each of the
> possible elements)

Writing a plugin is not a requirement, but it will give you the following
benefits:

- When someone right-clicks on your device in xPLHal Manager they can
receive a
context-sensitive list of actions they can perform.
E.g. try right-clicking on Tony's TTS, and you can select
"Speak", which lets
you enter some text to be spoken by that device.

- When someone is configuring your device, you can provide descriptions of
each
of the config items to guide users through what they need to input, and you
can
also perform validation of what they enter using regular expressions.

- You can support Determinators. This involves constructing a list of
things
that your device can tell an xPL network (triggers), and things that your
device
can do in response to an xPL message (actions).

Regards,

John