Re: [lcd4linux] Layout transitions

[Michael R. <mi...@re...>]

Hi Scott,

> Ok, sorry for sending this twice. I don't know if the first one went
> through or not. It's all garbled on the archive.

Well, as far as I can see, your first mail did make it perfectly to the list.

> I know I know, people are going "Not another one" but it ain't so. I
> got good news! I have a patch file here that enables layout
> transitions. Well, nothing fancy like, but the layouts do change.
Well, this is indeed good news!

> Each layout has its own timeout, which defaults to 5000. Now I better
> warn people, I don't normally program C, so it's likely I missed some
> of the memory management. I think I covered everything, but don't hurt
> me too bad if something blows up or worse. Reinforce your LCD's
> mounting brackets.
>From a quick look over your patch, it looks fine, except a few things...

> This also adds temperature and fan plugins for the Crystalfontz driver
> (most of the work was already there).
I'd like to add this as a seperate patch.

I hope you did create the diff against current trunk of svn, otherwise applying will be a hard job...

> And here's how to index your layouts. There should always be a Layout0.
This one I do not like. your patch would break every existing configuration out there.

> One last thing. In order to get things so your screen is cleared
> entirely between transitions, you'll have to add a clear callback to
> your driver. I only added it to the Crystalfontz driver.
This is the second point I don't like: I often thought about a clear() call in the display driver, but in fact it should
be not necessary. If you clear the framebuffer, this should be sufficient. And it should speed up things a lot
(especially on graphic displays).

anyway, I think we should apply your patch, BUT: I'd really like to release 0.11 before. Well, I planned to do the
release between cristmas and new year's day 2008 :-( Unfortunately I've been too busy

But maybe this could be the right motivation to do the release.

@all, especially michu: what do you think? Is the current svn code stable enough?

If yes, I would apply the temp and fan extensions, and release 0.11, and afterwards apply your patch. but you should
really find a way so lcd4linux runs without a Layout0 (but with a single "Layout")


One last point: I have been thinking about a similar solution to this problem. Maybe you patch will be integrated into
this concept: I will call it "screens"

The trick is that there will be several widgets (buttons, gpo's and stuff) that may be shared by more than one layout,
and other widgets (text, bars, timers, buttons) that will be different for each layout.

the structure will be like the following:

Layout 'Default' {
   screen 1 {
      row1.col1 'CPU'
      row2.col1 'Disk'
   }
   screen 2 {
      row1.col1 'LAN'
      row2.col1 'WAN'
   }
   GPO1 'Test_GPO'
}

So there will be only one active layout, probably containing more than one screen, and there will be a plugin which
allows you to change screens (scroll or directly access one screen), and you can bind this call to a timer, a button, or
any other event.



bye, Michael


-- 
Michael Reinelt <mi...@re...>
http://home.pages.at/reinelt
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