Re: front-end for interactively controlling xmosaic from command line

[email protected]
Wed, 8 Sep 1993 18:37:55 +0200


Earlier today Omy writes:
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 93 17:37:44 +0100
From: Colman Reilly <[email protected]>

As far as a slide show is concerned, I second the motion to have something
like this capability
Play/Pause
Stop
Rewind
Forward

I'm not sure that James was as clear as he could have been about this. The
idea is that we define a "sequence" which presentation we are. Initially we intend implementing slide sequences and
time sequences. MPEG, and audio sequences are in the future I'm afraid,
especially audio, because we don't have access to a machine with sound
capabilities right now.

As an example, take a slide sequence. The "control document" would look
like:

#20 second clocked sequence as intro.
sequence clock 20 {
frame 1 {get title_page.ps}
frame 10 {get credits.ps}
}
#Now a slide sequence.
sequence http {
get http:demo_slide1
get http:demo_slide2
get http:demo_slide3
.
.
.
get http:demo_slide19
get http:demo_slide20
} {
frame 1 {get http:intro.mpeg}
frame 10 {get http:inaction.gif}
frame 20 {get http:finishing.ps}
}

which certain slides.

Rewind, pause and play buttons would then apply to the underlying sequence
- not very useful on a slide sequence, but on a timed sequence like the
introduction above, quite useful.

Now making this work for mpegs etc. is quite difficult.

Also the other problem is that we need to have some way of finding out
when the displays start happening - i.e. when the picture is actually
displayed. At the moment a big picture might not have been displayed by
the time the timed sequence has finished - quite distressing. Any ideas?
Waiting for the window to be mapped is the best guess I can think of
right now, but it would be nice if the display programs could send back
signals when they're ready.

Any ideas?

Colman

-------
Colman Reilly ,School Of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
[email protected]
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