Re: xPL Frontend concept?

[Mal Lansell <mal@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This kind of thing could be useful to create customised home-control
menu screens for MVPs or MediaPortal too.  I've been thinking of
something along these lines, although my plan involved sending xPL
messages in response to keypresses, rather than the direct link to xPLHal.

To be of most use, each control would have to work both via a direct
press from a mouse, touchscreen etc or by use of the direction keys and
select button on a remote (so you would need to be able to define links
between buttons).

I envisaged the following button types:

Action - when clicked triggers sends an xPL message.
Link - takes you to another page of menu options
Prev - goes to the previous page
Next - goes to the next page (presuming you have been pressing prev to
move back through the history)
Home - returns to the main menu page.

That would give simple remote control capabilities.
If we add status tracking, then static images chosen according to state
(such as light on / light off) would be possible.
Also, static text, sliders and spin controls for entering numbers (such
as on/off times for CH or irrigation) would be useful, and perhaps a
combined control allowing the selection of days of the week (to set
irrigation days for example), although that could be built from the
basic buttons.

Obviousky there would need to be an editor, but that shouldn't be too
hard to make.  I'd have one large window representing a menu page, along
with  a list of thumbnails to let you switch pages, plus a button editor
dialog, to define the action, message, button artwork etc).  The menu
definition created in the editor would be written out as an XML file
that any of our apps could read and use to display xPL menus in a
consistant manner.

It did occur to me that maybe we could define menus in HTML, and use the
Mozilla rendering engine to display it, but I don't know if it would be
possible to define the links required for the up/down/left/right/select
method that would needed to allow control on an MVP or MediaPortal.

Mal


Ian Lowe wrote:

> Sounds rather cool Adrian - I was mulling over a similar concept,
> essentially looking at an app which has a "toolbox" of
various graphical
> controls (dimmers, knobs, buttons etc) that could be picked up in this
> way - basically a kind of intelligent paint app for creating screens
> that could then be loaded up as an entity.
>
> In theory you could have templates for each of the common screen sizes
-
> ipaq/laptop/touchscreen etc. you could also have transparent or clear
> buttons (so you could have a really classy background image nicely
> drawn, and simply mark out "hotspots" for where controls go.
>
> How this fits with xPL - very nicely actually :)
>
> The same xml plugins that allow xplhal manager to use determinators
> could easily be used to attach xPL "commands" on to the
buttons - If the
> frontend app talked XHCP to an xplhal server, then you could populate
> the screen labels etc with the value of global variables, or for that
> matter run either scripts or determinators on the xplhal server.
>
> This is worth taking forward I think - I'm also a VB6 (trying to move
to
> .NET) programmer, so we could probably work something out.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_xpl@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_xpl@xxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of Adrian
> Sent: 04 September 2005 10:09
> To: ukha_xpl@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_xpl] xPL Frontend concept?
>
> Hi
>
> was just thinking about all this talk re xPL front ends (or a nice
> looking graphical GUI the respresents the states of certain
variables).
> I can see that a few people having developed there own but of course
> these would be highly customised to that users environment and not so
> easy to be used elsewhere. (i know code i've written works for me but
> trying to make it really usable anyway takes time)
>
> I have a concept for a dumb GUI and thought i'd sound people out
(maybe
> inspire someone to write it too as my skills are a little slow (and
> finding some decent time))
>
> What i was thinging of was (for me in VB6) an application that is made
> up of a number of screens (for whatever)
>
> each of these has defined
> background image (or more so portions of it can be changed) eg if the
> image represents a room and the light is turned on, the background
> lightens
>
> clickable areas or icons
> each of these had multiple images (say an on/off button - 2 images one
> for on, one for off) this could have moreof course (like a pressed
down
> image before it shows the on image)
>
> general no clickable bitmaps
> like a scale for dimming - say we have a button (as above) on top of
and
> below this image.
> each press of the up of down buttons changes the general bitmat to
> another (in this case we might have 10 bitmats each representing the
10
> different scales general text field any text can be displaed here
>
> basically, we have a config app which allows you to setup the screens,
> defind the backgrounds, define the buttons and the icons (and there
> location)
>
> hows does this fit into xpl?  When this app come up (excuse me if this
> doesnt guite gell, i'm still learning about xpl) I'm not quite sure
how
> it registers itself with xplHAL but could give it a list of icons it
has
> and the number of variations of this (so for one of the clickables it
> would just say i have a clickable called "but2", it has 2
settings
> (but2.1, but2.2), i
> have slider bitmap (10 settings, slider.1   -> slider10)...
>
> From here we could configure xPLHAL to interact with it say user
presses
> button 1,a xpl-trig is sent saying but2 is pressed, HAL does whatever
> this button does (turn on light?) and tells the GUI (xpl-CMD?)to
change
> to the second icon. If there was also a screen on the GUI which
> represented the room with this light, it could also tell it to change
> the background image on that screen as well so if we went to this
> different screen, the background has aready been changed.
>
> So for anything that changes in HAL, it can tell the GUI which icon
this
> now represents. The GUI has no intelligence, it just shows the icons
and
> remembers there state.
>
> I did think that the GUI could just listen the xpl messages and adjust
> itself as needed but this would require more complex setup on the GUI
> side (having to tell an ICON what to listen for to change).
>
> any comments/other concepts/is this the right track?
>
>
> Adrian
>
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