Re: [Animix-devel] aniplay: docs update

[Daniel F. <Da...@di...>]

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