[PD] RJDJ,sceneplayer & Xoom

[Peter Brinkmann]

Hi,
A few clarifications regarding the ScenePlayer app for Android:

* The app faithfully implements all features of the iPhone app that were
publicly documented last summer, including rj_image, rj_text, sensor input,
etc.  There have been a few additions since (scaling and rotating text, I
think); those will be easy enough to add when I see the new specs, and I'm
not aware of any scenes that require them.  In short, a properly written
RjDj scene should look and behave the same for both versions.

* The Android version implements rj_image and friends as abstractions, not
externals.  The immediate practical reason is that the architecture of
Android apps pretty much requires this, but it's also a simpler design that
was possible because of the message-passing features of libpd.  Generally
speaking, I believe that the only externals that you would really want to
use with libpd are those that enhance the signal processing capabilities of
Pd (e.g., fiddle~).  Everything else is more easily implemented outside of
Pd and controlled with messages.

* I don't think it would be a good idea to generalize ScenePlayer to accept
image sizes other than 320x320 because that would almost certainly break
compatibility with the original.  A more realistic approach would be to
tweak the UI so that it'll scale to fill up the screen (while preserving the
aspect ratio) or at least center itself on Honeycomb devices.  I won't have
time to work on this, but if somebody wants to implement this, I'll be happy
to consider a patch.

Cheers,
     Peter




On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 9:53 AM, Chris McCormick <chris at mccormick.cx> wrote:

> Hi Joe,
>
> On Wed, Jun 08, 2011 at 01:59:44PM +0100, Joe White wrote:
> > Couldn't we just update the [rj_image] external in the ScenePlayer on
> Android
> > to accept any sized image?
>
> Sure, but then scenes you make and run with ScenePlayer would be
> incompatible with RjDj on iOS. There are other things to be taken into
> account too, like what happens if your user has a tablet with a different
> aspect ratio? How should images be stretched etc.? A fixed 320x320 bitmap is
> not a great starting point to make things more flexible and still look good.
> Basically you have to break the existing RjDj format if you want those
> features.
>
> With PdDroidParty I am going to provide a facility to bundle SVGs
> ("Scalable Vector Graphic") for your patch background and for each GUI type
> in order to theme them. I was also thinking about 9-patch graphics[1].
> Hopefully this means that patches with fancy graphics will look reasonable
> on all devices. I am some way off from doing that though, and I may run out
> of steam before I get to it. :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris.
>
> [1] http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/draw9patch.html
>
> -------------------
> http://mccormick.cx
>
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