Hi List,
I've been tinkering around with AniPlay and thought I'd write down some
of my experiences so others could benefit.
There are no build docs in the source, tarball or CVS, so the best place
to start is from Colin's updates to the project website:
> Updates to AniPlay documentation.
> + Added docs page (placeholder).
> + Added 'build & launch' guide.
Instead of repeating Colin's instructions I'll explain where I deviated.
First of all, checking out the source from CVS will insure that the
latest sources are being used. Since I like to create scripts updating
projects that I'm working on I simply use a one-step command:
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:ano...@cv...:/cvsroot/animix \
co animix
This way I don't need to log in and the script can run as a cron job if
desired. Note once you have the sources you can simply change into the
source directory and do a:
cvs update
Make sure you're in the animix source directory, one with a 'CVS'
directory or 'cvs update' won't work.
The next step is making sure you've got all the dependencies. I'm using
Gentoo and it was easy to setup a Java build and runtime environment.
Most other Linux distributions are also easy to setup. I did have to
find and download jlfgr-1_0.jar because it wasn't in portage--so where
to put that file?
It seems that there is no agreement on where to place the files and how
to setup the classpath. This means you'll either have to modify the
animix/aniplay/build.xml file or put your dependencies in the path
specified in build.xml. I made symlinks in a /usr/local/java directory
for the distribution installed dependencies and placed jlfgr-1_0.jar in
there. Here is the contents of my /usr/local/java:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Nov 10 07:44 batik -> /usr/share/batik-1.6
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 114580 Dec 11 17:59 jlfgr-1_0.jar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Nov 10 21:00 jmf -> /usr/share/jmf-bin
(Of course ignore the line wraps put in by the email program.)
Building and launching AniPlay from within the animix/aniplay directory
should now be possible using 'ant play' but the real beauty of Java
applications is building once and running everywhere--well, almost.
There are some tricks to this.
Linux
If the dependencies are located or symlinked in /usr/local/java and you
are in the directory containing AniPlay-0.0.1.jar, then the way to
launch AniPlay-0.0.1.jar is with the following command:
java -classpath
/usr/local/java/jmf/lib/jmf.jar:/usr/local/java/batik/lib/batik.jar:/usr/local/java/jlfgr-1_0.jar:./AniPlay-0.0.1.jar
uk.ac.gla.cmt.animatics.apps.aniplay.AniPlay
Note that on Linux I need to hit the play button twice to get it to play
the first time.
Macintosh
The first platform that I tried after Linux was Mac OS-X. It turns out
that Java is already pretty much setup and all that's needed is to place
the dependencies in their right place. I couldn't find instructions for
this and ended up putting all the files in /Library/Java/Extensions.
Here is what it looks like on my Mac:
iMac:/Library/Java/Extensions dfort$ ls
LICENSE.dom-documentation.txt batik-script.jar
LICENSE.dom-software.txt batik-svg-dom.jar
LICENSE.js.txt batik-svggen.jar
LICENSE.pdf-transcoder.txt batik-swing.jar
LICENSE.sax.txt batik-transcoder.jar
LICENSE.xerces_2_5_0.txt batik-util.jar
LICENSE.xml-apis.txt batik-xml.jar
README.js.txt batik.jar
README.pdf-transcoder.txt customizer.jar
README.xerces_2_5_0.txt jlfgr-1_0.jar
batik-awt-util.jar jmf.jar
batik-bridge.jar jmf.properties
batik-css.jar js.jar
batik-dom.jar mediaplayer.jar
batik-ext.jar multiplayer.jar
batik-extension.jar pdf-transcoder.jar
batik-gui-util.jar xerces_2_5_0.jar
batik-gvt.jar xml-apis.jar
batik-parser.jar
Launching AniPlay is as simple as double clicking the app icon.
Windows
The only dependency that has a Windows installer is JMF so I used the
location where it was installed. The others I put in C:\animix and in
order to launch AniPlay it is similar to Linux:
C:\>java -classpath "c:\Program Files\JMF2.1.1e\lib\
jmf.jar";c:\animix\batik-1.6\batik.jar;c:\animix\jlfgr-1_0.jar;c:\animix\AniPlay
-0.0.1.jar uk.ac.gla.cmt.animatics.apps.aniplay.AniPlay
Make sure to add the quotes if you have path names that include spaces.
Once again pleas ignore those pesky line wraps.
General
Of course you'll have to have an aniplay file to playback. That means
making one with AniComp. The beauty of AniPlay is that once you have a
file to play back, it can be played from either the local drive or
posted on a web server.
Sounds interesting? Then get involved!
--Dan
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