MED

My entertainment Desktop

MED - SDL Multimedia Desktop

Why ?

I have somewhere in my place a MacMini that remains unused. I enjoy playing arcade games with xmame and just bought an X-arcade device for that purpose. I want to be able to handle the linux powered MacMini entirely with the X-Arcade device ; so I can plug it to my TV and control the stuff without any need of a keyboard.
In short, I want a joystick-controlled, eye-candy interface.

Targets

Providing an interface totally manageable through a simple user input device such as a Joystick, a Joypad or a remote controller.
Extremely simplified user input : evrything should be possible with 6 kind of user-inputs: Up, Down, Left, Right, Button 1, Button 2.
Minimalist desktop layout with the following elements:
- Launchers: customizable shortcuts for applications
- Tree-Menu layout. Launchers are stored in a menu. A launcher can either launch a command or give access to another menu.

Choices

Based on a Debian Etch system.
Open an X session automatically with a very light WM (blackbox for instance)
med is actually a utterly basic GUI written in SDL
Launch at the session startup the med binary which is actually the desktop (full screen).
Generic behaviour :
- Handle several inputs silently (keyboard, joypads, ...)
- Button 1 always means OK, Enter, Yes, ...
- Button 2 always means No, Cancel, Back, Close, ...
- LEFT means "going back in a menu"
- RIGHT means "entering a sub-menu"

Configuration File

The conffile supports the following entry:

[video]
type = directory
root = /data/videos
command = /usr/bin/totem -f %s
grab-input = true
action-left = totem --previous
action-right = totem --next
action-up = totem --volume-up
...

This kind of entry in the conffile allows dynamic entries, very useful for browsing videos for instance.

State

2007/04/22

~~Write first version of med~~

~~availibility to browse with the basic-6-inputs~~
~~Support for the Tree-menu~~
~~Menus are described in a config file (ini format).~~

2007/04/23

~~Support for the X-arcade~~

~~Reverse-engine the X-arcade keycodes~~
~~Support for the X-arcade (keycodes) : The X-arcade is recognized as an USB Keyboard under Linux, not as a joystick.~~

2007/04/24

Support for the complete fullscreen mode

~~Init a video mode in fullscreen~~
~~Function for refreshing the screen gently~~
when launching a command do not quit the fullscreen mode

2007/06/25

Support for thumbnails in the menus. It's now possible to add the option "thumb-command" in the conffile. Then for each item found, MED will call the command defined to build a thumb (if not already done).

Here is an example with the following conffile entry :

  [vids]
  type = directory
  root = /data/videos
  title = Videos
  command = /usr/bin/totem --fullscreen "%s"
  grabinput = true
  hook-left = /usr/bin/totem --seek-bwd
  hook-right = /usr/bin/totem --seek-fwd
  hook-up = /usr/bin/totem --volume-up
  hook-down = /usr/bin/totem --volume-down
  hook-ok = /usr/bin/totem --play-pause; /usr/bin/gnome-osd-client "pause"
  hook-cancel = /usr/bin/totem --quit
  thumb-command = /usr/bin/totem-video-thumbnailer "%s" "%s"

~~Support for thumb-command in the conffile entries~~
~~Display the thumbs in the menu, if defined~~
Highlight the items with thumbs

TO DO

Programming Design / Application Layout

make a scrollbar for menu longer than the display
~~Support for skins (background, fonts, coordinates, all that stuff)~~
support for icons in front of the menu items (directory, app)
Handling of the "info" frame (right)
~~support for a menu type "directory" that fills dynamically the content of a directory in the menu entry.~~
a reload feature, that should be called on a specific keybinding, which makes MED reload its conffile, ideally, could be triggered on SIGHUP.