Livespaces
Training Workshop - Meta-App Exercise

Exercise 6: Authoring Meta-Apps

At the end of this session you'll know how to

• Create and run meta-apps and sessions
• Use the media viewer
• See how meta-apps and sessions are used from Ignite and the Session Controller.

Key points:

Meta-Apps

• Meta-apps are a way of scripting changes in the state of Entities in a room, affecting the behaviour of devices in the room.
• Meta-apps consist of a tree of actions, where each action may, in fact, be a group of actions to execute.
• Sessions are meta-apps that don't have a time element to them, i.e. they set the room up in a particular configuration.
• The Meta-app editor is used to create, modify, and run meta-apps.
  • The tool bar is context sensitive and allows the following types of functions
    • behaviour buttons for grouping actions, linking to other meta-apps, pausing, and indexing
    • control buttons for media, applications, and devices (including generic Entity state changes)
    • playback control
    • copy/paste, promote/demote
• priorities are used to run particular actions on particular computers (e.g. priority 1 actions will run on all computers that have a Media Viewer (see below) with a priority of 1).

Media Viewer

• The media viewer framework allows a computer to host the running of actions, e.g. running powerpoint slides or sound or movie files, as well as applications from the command line.
• A computer can host multiple viewers or none.
• Each viewer has a priority. Actions in a meta-app with the same priority will be executed within that viewer.
• The media viewer application allows the viewers to be set up and manipulated. It can manipulate the viewers on the local computer or on any computer in the room (providing it is running a ComputerEntity and running the media viewer bundles)

Steps:

1. Editor overview
1.1 Buttons
1.1.1 Create new meta-app
1.1.2 Import and export a meta-app (dbxml)
1.1.3 Behaviour buttons; group, link, pause (and index)
1.1.4 Control button groups; media, application, device (and generic control)
1.1.5 Edit; delete, copy, paste, up, down, promote, demote, drag and drop
1.1.6 Record voice note
1.1.7 Player controls; play, pause and resume
1.2 Tree
1.3 Runtime property editor

2. Demo creating a meta-app using only `PAUSE` and `GROUP` nodes, this will show how to structure and control the runtime behaviour of a meta-app
2.1 Create a new meta-app, call it "pause demo"
2.2 Add a child pause node to "pause demo" node
2.3 Add a child group node to "pause demo" node
2.4 Add a child pause node to the group node
2.5 Add a child pause node to the group node
2.6 Add a child pause node to the group node
2.7 Play the pause demo
2.8 Change an arbitrary child pause node delay to first using the in-place editor and then the runtime editor
2.9 Play the pause demo
2.10 Play the group node
2.11 Change the group node to parallel
2.12 Play the pause demo
2.13 Use the copy paste buttons to extend the pause demo nesting, do a minute or two of editing and playing (free play)

3. Create media views to allow you to play visual media content
3.1 Launch the media viewer admin dashboard widget
3.2 Select your computer, if not already selected
3.3 Set number of views to 3
3.4 Set the priority of the 3 views from left to right to be 2,1,3
3.5 Demo the other buttons; add/remove window trim, show/hide view, show/hide all views, layout views
3.6 Should be comfortable adding/removing, setting priorities and locating view windows by here.
3.7 Mention that you can set the views on remote machines within the livespace by selecting a different computer

4. Create a real world example meta-app (multi-media presentation)
4.1 Create a new meta-app, call it physical characteristics demo"
4.2 Add group node, call it "physical characteristics" say
4.3 Add nodes: 
    `/livespace_overview/phys_char_media_translation/display01-1.ppt` (ppt, priority 1)
        `/livespace_overview/phys_char_media_translation/speech/Female/1-whiteboards.wav` (media, priority 1)
        1x, 1 sec delay (Next, priority 2)
        `/livespace_overview/phys_char_media_translation/video/whiteboards.avi` (media)
        `/livespace_overview/phys_char_media_translation/video/hanging_docs.avi` (media)
    `/livespace_overview/phys_char_media_translation/display02-1.ppt` (ppt, priotity 2)
    `/livespace_overview/phys_char_media_translation/display03-1.ppt` (ppt, priority 3)
4.4 Mention `mediaBaseURL` on the room entity
4.5 Check the audio bean under the computer is priority 1
4.6 Note how we select one Powerpoint to put all the media under - this helps with getting the coordination right


5. Play the physical characteristics meta-app demo

6. Miscellaneous stuff.
6.1 Voice notes
> It is possible to take dictation if you have a microphone attached to your computer. A sound file is created and saved to a location of your choice, and then the URL to that location is entered into the meta-app.
6.2 Custom nodes
> These are for manipulating `Entities` that don't have a custom control.
6.3 Links
> These are for embedding meta-apps within other meta-apps.

Questions that were answered:

1. How can I put a new device in a room and then control it from the meta-apps?

   You need to model the device with an Entity as was shown in the Deployment exercise where we learned about the SoundPlayer application, and then it will be available to be manipulated by meta-apps. If you want a custom widget for editing that new kind of Entity then it's not hard to add that functionality (but the detail of it is outside the scope of this answer).