Development Progress

[Sama]

forgot to mention, my only concern with it having windows hooks, is that it would become windows oriented, and I'm trying to make it work with Mac and linux too.

[ElKeeed]

mmm the trouble with that is that things that try always end up so so on everything rather than great on just one or two platforms.

Probably best to have a lot in common but then optimisations for various platforms than try to be too generic?

[Sama]

I agree and disagree!

I agree that porting stuff over from one platform to the other, means too much messing around, and also that writing stuff in the wrong way for multi os's is usually ineffecient.

but when coding for multiplatform correctly, it can be just as good on all systems (give or take the abilities of the os's, like Java Linux can address more memory than Java Windows).

When writing multiplatform code, it's important to write as abstract as possible, and where specific system hooks are required, that this be done in a single class, where it can be done differently for different os's.

For example, say you have a TV card. Windows will have one driver, Mac another, and these drivers do not speak the same protocol. So you start by specifying an interface, which will allow you to change channel, change volume, and all the functions required on the top end of the system. then you implement that interface using one class for windows, and another for mac.

If writing something for the serial port, like a GPS for example, where the drivers do speak the same protocol (baudrate, party, bits etc), then you can write the code to read/write bytes to/from a stream within a common class, and you only point to a differernt driver.

So between direct OS communcation, and wrapping specific drivers, you can get the best of both worlds.

that's my take on it anyway :)

[~Rob]

So you're going to have a small accessor method to detect the OS and then use different classes depending on the OS to do the same thing. So for example you'd have a method which does the basics and another which calls it depending on the OS? Sounds like a lot of coding!

[Sama]

that's the point. most of the time, you needn't write additonal OS code, since most of the code will be done multiplatoform. It's only when there are specific devices that need coding, you'd need to write an OS specific driver.

So again, TV card example at hand, if you write all the code in Velocity to do your channel surfing, favourite channels, recording, taking screenshots etc. This will work for all OS's. Then you would need a class that implements the TV interface for windows, and a class that would do so for linux.

Of course I wouldn't write them all, but someone that wants to add linux support, would do so by writing a single class.

[Sama]

it's basically removing dependancy from the code, and saying: if on this OS, these are the classes that are dependant on, and if this OS, these are the classes. and in those classes, you only need to code the differences between the os's.

[Sama]

Today, I stabalized the framework a bit, and did some performance testing, as I feared the network would be filled with rubbish and Flash would slow down.

I was sending an update message from Java to Flash every millisecond (highly unlikely situation) and was also polling vlc every millisecond, all at the same time as repeatedly changing from video to mp3, hammering mp3 additions to vlc and hammering video additions to video.

don't forget, that these are three different technologies that are talking to each other, and you really need to make sure the turns are sorted out correctly etc...

it works like charm!

[com2soft]

all the support for your hard work.

[ccsnet]

So for the un-brisolistes of us any chance of some screenies ?

Terran

[Sama]

I've just done some video capture, but since the vlc window is an overlay, it's not being shown, so you'll have to use your imagination and pretend the video is in the black box

video moved to this thread

[ccsnet]

Originally Posted by Sama

I've just done some video capture, but since the vlc window is an overlay, it's not being shown, so you'll have to use your imagination and pretend the video is in the black box

Whats the avi type ? Its not a standard one or I'd be able to play it...

Terran

[Sama]

oops! dunno, I just used this freeware grabber. just use VLC ;)

do you know any good grabbers that will do overlayed video as well?

[Sama]

it's xvid

[nigelf]

Sama... that VLC is the dogs..... wow i may dump media player and winamp! it plays anything... and smoothly.

[Sama]

indeed. I saw this as a tip on the other side and was convinced it's the way to go for media playback