From: Jerry Van Baren <gerald.vanbaren_at_smiths-aerospace.com>
Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 07:58:15 -0400

I've been dabbling with the idea of a loadable user interface. This is the
same idea as WPS, only for the whole interface and not just the playback
screen. This would eliminate "UI wars" and would allow specialized uses
without requiring recompilation of the code (for my specialized use, I want
a very simple to use "tape recorder" style interface).

The downside, of course, is (a) it has to be invented, (b) it has to be
written, (c) it has to be debugged, and (d) it has to be reasonably compact
so our 200K of RockBox doesn't bloat into 190K of flexible UI and no
functionality :-/.

My thoughts are to use XML to define screens, using the XML links to form
menus. Tags would then be created to allow functions to be called with
parameters passed in from the UI definition file (e.g. a function would
display a directory listing with parameters identifying how many lines or
the x/y screen area it could use to display the directory listing in). UI
functions would be "exported" which would create a mapping of the ASCII
name of the function to the actual code so the UI XML would use symbolic
names for the UI functions.

If parsing the XML causes too much bloat (quite likely), we could create a
UI "compiler" which would compile the XML into a more compact, more easily
parsed version (syntax/error handling typically adds huge amounts to
parsing code).

All I have to date is libxml http://xmlsoft.org/ with some very limited
definition and very, very limited proof of concept running native on a
linux box (not even using the UI simulator).

gvb


At 11:19 PM 5/1/2003 -0400, bjorn_at_haxx.se wrote:
>ajf wrote:
> > I see at least four different Rockbox audiences and I'm a member of three
> > of them. Each has different needs re playlists, bookmarks, cueing, level
> > setting, etc etc.
> >
> > A Jukebox music player
> > An audiobook player
> > A DJ/party music and sound effects mixer
> > A field recorder
> >
> > Can one 200K piece of software do all these things? Should it?
>
>I think we'll have enough room for it, especially if move some things to
>loadable plugins.
>
>The more tricky thing, however, is the user interface. It's difficuly
>designing
>with a user interface that is optimal for all of these four user categories.
>
> > >>To summarise, for DJ-like operations we need three new settings :
> > >>1. "Play single mode", or "Pause after track" : "Yes", "No"
> > >>2. "Skip silence" : "No", "Leading", "Trailing", "Both"
> > >>3. "Silence threshold" : "-xxx dB"
>
>Number 1 is pretty simple (and not much code), but number 2 & 3 is rather
>difficult to implement with acceptable accuracy. It also would require lots of
>code and processor power.
>
>--
>Björn



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Received on 2003-05-02