[Eyecatcher-general] First prototype ready

[Alexandru Bradescu-Popa]

It looks ok from the point of view of future translation. This will be 
verry easy if all we will start from the english model. Of course will 
appear probably some wrong allignements (due to differences on length of 
a phrase in every language) but we will handle it somehow. Tehnically I 
think it's organised well, with a good directory tree. I think that 
right now we shoud make a brainstom with proposals for the "sketch 
boards" that we will have on this presentation. We coud start with 
simple ideeas (just one, or an entire slideshow).

Alexander Schmehl wrote:

>Good morning everyone!
>
>
>This night I finished a first prototype.  It's ugly, it doensn't work as
>expected, and I have been to sleepy while commiting it to cvs, so just
>ignore the "general" modul and check out general2.
>
>Okay, please install cvs, mgp, m4 and bash (if not allread installed).
>
>Now do the following:
>0. create a subdirectory for your work and change to it
>1. cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.alioth.debian.org:/cvsroot/eyecatcher login
>  you will be asked for a password, just press enter
>2. cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.alioth.debian.org:/cvsroot/eyecatcher co general2
>  a subdirectory "general2" will be created, you have checked out my
>  work
>3. cd general2, read the README
>4. run ./RUN-PRESENTATION.sh
>  Hopefully you will see a small presentation running in an endless loop
>  in englisch and german.
>
>
>If you want to quit it, you need to press <ctrl>+<c> hold it, or press
>it many times, or press it near the end of one  presentation run hoping
>to quit if it ends.
>
>
>If you took a look an RUN-PRESENTATION.sh you'll know why:  The
>presentations are called in an "while true" loop, since magicpoint has
>no mode for loops :(
>
>
>Now that you see that it runs, you might want to know how its runs.
>
>
>It's quite simple:
>
>The "layout" of the presentation is in presentation/presentation.mgp;
>defaults.mgp contains some default values for backgrounds, fonts, etc.
>If you see there "toberun-??.mgp" files: Ignore them, they are created
>on the fly and should be deleted afterwards, but since you need to break
>the loop, they might surrive; doesn't matter, they get overwritten next
>time you call RUN-PRESENTATION.sh
>
>
>In the folder languages are subdirectory for each language.  If you call
>RUN-PRESENTATION.sh the txt files in this language subdirectories are
>includes by the main presentation.mgp and writen to the toberun-??.mgp
>files.  After the toberun-??.mgp files are created, finally magicpoint
>is called in a loop.
>
>
>As you might have notices, I'm using m4 to create the toberun-files.
>That's because magicpoint doesn't support real include statements as I
>thought :(
>
>
>An other problem is, that you see your desktop between two calls of
>magicpoint, creating some kind of flair.  That's not nice, too, but
>until #287350 is solved, I don't know a better solution.
>
>BTW:  Anyone thinking I was a bit harsh is this wishlist bugreport?
>Sorry, wasn't my intention.
>
>
>Beside all the Problems mentioned above, it would be fairly easy to add
>a new language:
>
>Just create a new subdirectory with your country code in language.  Copy
>the files from language/en  and translate all the textfiles there.
>
>As explained in the README file, you can of course call just one
>language, by setting the lang_active variable:
>lang_active="de" ./RUN-PRESENTATION.sh
>
>
>So far for now.  Does that sound like the infrastructure we would like
>to use?  
>
>
>Yours sincerely,
>  Alexander
>
>
>  
>