Description:

There are a number of ways to use CQC's Interface Viewer program. Generally it is used either on a touch screen system, or on a standard computer via mouse and keyboard. However it is also used on a large projected screen, generally in a home theater. This allows everyone in the theater to see the interface, for activities like selecting a movie to view. In some cases, this might be driven by an IR based keyboard, so that it works much like a standard computer based viewer. But in cases where that is not desirable, it is often driven via an IR remote control or perhaps via another CQC client on a hand held tablet.

For this latter scenario, it is necessary to control the Interface Viewer program remotely, since the keyboard and mouse of the CQC client machine whose output it showing on the big screen are not being used. To support this requirement, the Interface Viewer provides a control interface and this device driver provides access to that interface via the standard device/field type of scheme. This allows you to drive the viewer on the big screen indirectly.

Using the Interface Viewer in this way depends on the 'focus' system, which works much like the way standard Windows dialog boxes work, where you can use the arrow keys to move around a 'focus indicator' to the various buttons, list boxes, etc... They visually change in some way to indicate that they have the focus, and when you press Enter, the one with the focus will see that do something. The focus system of the Interface Viewer works the same way. You will use an IR remote or another CQC client to mostly send the viewer commands like 'move left', 'move down' and so forth to move a focus indicator around, and then send it a 'press the current button' type command to invoke the button with the focus. There are a few other specialized commands, but that comprises the bulk of how the remote control scheme works.

• In order for the driver to connect to the Interface Viewer's remote control interface, it must be enabled, which is not the case by default because most scenarios don't make use of it. You must add a /Port=xxx parameter to the Interface Viewer's startup command line in the start menu, where xxx is an unused port (generally something up in the 20000 range.)

For more about the focus system see the Tutorial Videos and Technical Documents sections under the Learn tab of the web site.

Quirks and Limitations:

Don't use this interface to send commands to an interface viewer that users interact with directly. It doesn't attempt to insure that being hit from both directions at once won't cause problems.

The focus movements follows the 'z-order' of the widgets. So when focus is moved to the next or previous widget that accepts it, this is done by moving forward or backwards through the widget list in the order that they are arranged. A widget's position in the z-order is reflected by their order in the widget palette of the Interface Editor, and can be changed using it as well.

Note that some widgets have multiple internal focus positions. Something like a cover art browsers has to allow you to move the focus through the displayed list of titles or collections and the focus only moves out of the browser when you get to the last item. However there are special commands for going to the previous or next focus widget, skipping past any potential internal focus positions.

Connection Details

This driver talks to the Interface Viewer via a network connection, but only on the current machine. I.e. this driver must be loaded into a CQC Server instance that is running on the same machine as the Interface Viewer it is to control.

Driver Fields

This section lists the fields that the driver makes available, their types, minimum and maximum values, etc...

Name	Type	R/W	Description/Limits
Action	String	W	This is the primary field that is used to drive the interface. It is an enumerated field, the values of which are defined below so that they can be discussed at more length.
CurBaseTmpl	String	R	This always holds the name of the base template currently loaded into the viewer. The base template means the top level one, underneath any popups.
CurTopTmpl	String	R	This always holds the name of the top-most template being displayed. If there are no popup or pop-out templates displayed, then this will be the same as CurBaseTmpl. Else it will indicate the name of the current top-most popup layer.
LayerCount	Card	R	The currently number of popup layers
LoadOverlay	String	W	This field allows you to load a new template into a specific top level overlay. So it must be an overlay that is a child of the base template. You must write a value to it in this form: MyOverlay, \User\MyTemplate The first value is the name of the overlay to load (the name given to it on the Base tab of its attribute dialog), then there is a comma, followed by the path to the template to load. For now, it will always start with \User\ so that when we move to a hierarchical storage format for templates, it will be correct.
LoadTemplate	String	W	This field allows you to load a new base template. You just write the path to the new template you want to load. It will be ignored if any pop-ups are displayed. The format of the value written must be \User\MyTemplate, i.e. it must be the actual template name prefixed by \User\.

Action Values:

Blanker - Invokes the blanker
Blank Display - Turns off the display backlight
Blank and Blanker - Invokes the blanker and turns off the display backlight
Down/Right - Moves the focus to the next available focus item, or next internal focus position
Enter - Invokes the widget with the focus, if applicable
Hide - Hides the interface viewer window
Left/Up - Moves the focus to the previous available focus item or internal focus position
Maximize - Maximizes the viewer window
Minimize - Minimizes the viewer window
Next - Moves the focus to the next widget that can take the focus, skipping any internal focus positions
Prev - Moves the focus to the previous widget that can take the focus, skipping any internal focus positions
Restore - Restores the viewer window from a minimized or maximized state
Show - Shows the viewer window if it is hidden