exquisite: un’altra apps nel cvs di e17

02Nov07

EDIT:
Rasterman aveva già tutto pronto da un bel po’…

——————————————————

Oggi il grande “Rasterman” ha aggiunto un’altra apps al cvs di e17. Senza nessun grande proclamo ufficiale, leggiamo tra i log cvs: “exquisite splashscreen – put in cvs.”.
Certo, non che ci sia granchè da dire. Exquisite è un semplicissimo splashscreen, simil psplash, per dispositivi embedded, quindi, per adesso, nulla di realmente utilizzabile per i nostri desktop casalinghi. Tuttavia, siccome il lavoro è di Rasterman ed è un progetto efl-based non potevo che provarlo.

Riporto qui il README di exquisite (un po’ lunghetto):

Exquisite 0.0.1
—————

This is a psplash replacement that is very simple and uses EFL (Evas, Edje,
Ecore etc.) for display – thus having immensely powerful theme abilities
without needing any platform-specific compiled themes or modules. It is
compatible with psplash with the same message commands (and more). The
difference is that it requires libraries like evas, edje, ecore, eet and
embryo. These also have loadable modules of their own – thus this isn’t
perfect for systems that can’t have these libraries available and working at
boot, but if you can, it’s a lot more capable than other splash engines,
while still running in the framebuffer.

Requiremnents:
————–

* eet
* evas
* ecore
* embryo
* edje

Please see http://www.enlightenment.org for information on these.

If you want fraembuffer support to work, evas and ecore will need to be built
with FB support. X11 support requires X11 (software and/or xrender) to be
built for evas and ecore.

Compiling:
———-

Once you have met requirements, compiling and installing is simple:

./configure
make
make install

There is a demo included in the demo/ directory:

cd ./demo
./run-demo.sh

As a very basic sample of what can be done – will run by default in X11 in a
window and is a great way to test themes etc. Read run-demo.sh for some more
details on commands used.

So how does this work?
———————-

1. You need to launch the exquisite somehow as the “display server”. This
will display the Exquisite screen and default theme in its basic state. There
are many command line options, run ‘exquisite -h’ for a list. Here is what
they are:

-x11 Display using software X11
The default engine is the software X11 one anyway – so this option isn’t
that useful.
-gl Display using OpenGL in X11
This uses the OpenGL engine if available in ecore and evas. Requires working
OpenGL libraries and an Xserver.
-fb Display using Framebuffer
This uses the linux framebuffer for display. It requires FB support in
ecore and evas. It will use the current bit depth and resolution for the FB.
Note that Evas’s FB engine only supports 15, 16 and 24/32 bpp. 8bpp is not
supported.
-xr Display using XRender
This uses Xrender for display under X11.
-fs Display fullscreen (use current screen res)
This makes Exquisite ask to go fullscreen. Under X11 it requires a WM to be
present, and will mean Exquisite uses the whole FB res when in FB mode.
-t theme Use Theme file ‘theme’
This specifies which theme to use. You can specify a relative or full path
to a specifric EDJE file (eg /path/to/theme.edj) or just a theme name like
“default” or “mydistro”. themes must be put in
PREFIX/share/exquisite/data/themes , where PREFIX is the install prefix for
exquisite (the default is /usr/local). When using theme short names, the
theme name is just the filename of the EDJE file in the theme directory
minus the .edj extension.
-x res Use horizontal res ‘res’
Display with a window or display resoltuion width of ‘res’ pixels
-y res Use vertical res ‘res’
Display with a window or display resolution height of ‘res’ pixels
-ic Kb Set image cache in Kb
Use ‘Kb’ Kilobytes of memory for caching image data from disk to avoid
re-reading data1. You need to launch the exquisite somehow as the “display server”. This
will display the Exquisite screen and default theme in its basic state. There
are many command line options, run ‘exquisite -h’ for a list. Here is what
they are:
from disk.
-fc Kb Set font cache in Kb
Use ‘Kb’ Kilobytes of memory for caching font data from disk to avoid
re-reading data from disk.
-fps fps Set attempted framerate in frames per second
Run at ‘fps’ frames per second for animation. Generally the higher, the
better, but if you want to reduce CPU overhead, run at a lower ‘fps’. The
default is 30 frames per second. Note that Exquisite will LOWER the fps as
needed if it can’t animate at the fps asked. This will mean animations will
take the same amount of time, but just be more “jerky”.

Some example command-lines you may want:

exquisite -fb -fs
exquisite -fb -fs -t ubuntu
exquisite -fb -fs -t openmkoko -fps 15
exquisite -fb -fs -t /boot/fedora.edj -fps 60

Remember that exquisite won’t detech from the shell – and it doesn’t write a
PID file – there is no need because you can communicate via exquisite-write.

2. You need a /tmp directory for the UNIX socket that is used to talk to
exquisite. The exquisite-write utility sends messages to exquisite via a UNIX
domain socket created in /tmp. This needs to be writable for exquisite to
start.

3. Use exquisite-write to send messages to the display. Your init scripts will
need to be peppered with instances of exquisite-write. Its parameters are
compatible with psplash. Here are the common examples that are compatible:

exquisite-write MSG X
Tell Exquisite to display the text message “X” on the screen. Remember to
quote or escape whitespace for the “X” parameter.
exquisite-write PROGRESS N
Tell Exquisite to update some progress display to be at “N” percent. N should
be an integer value from 0 to 100.
exquisite-write QUIT
Tell Exquisite to exit immediately, freeing up its FB console or closing its
X11 window.

These commands are extended (themes may or may not support them):

exquisite-write END
This asks Exquisite to exit “nicely”. Exquisite in turn asks the theme to
shut down. This may be animated and take some period of time. The
exquisite-write command will not return until the shut down has finished.
exquisite-write TITLE X
Tell Exquisite to display a title of “X” on the screen.
exquisite-write TICK
Send a “tick” (a heartbeat) to Exquisite. This may be used to indicate
visially to the user that the boot process is working and is busy, and things
are alive, but are not making any “progress”.

4. You may want to do a theme of your own. Themes are done using Edje – the
same theme engine used for Enlightenment 0.17, EWL, ETK, Rage, and other
applications and toolkits. For detailed information on Edje themeing please
see http://www.enlightenment.org. For the purposes of Exquisite, there is a
sample (minimal) theme included. See data/themes/default.edc for the source.

An Exquisite theme must:

1. Respond to the “exquisite” “exit” signal. On this signal it must shut down
somehow – and then emit a “exquisitie” “done” signal to indicate it is done.
2. Must provide an “exquisite.message” TEXT part, OR have a sctip message
handler that handles string messages. Message ID 1 is the message with the
string to display if it choses to handle these via script. There will also be
an “exquisite” “message” signal sent when a new message string is set.
3. Must provide a dragable item “exquisite.progress” that is confined to
another part so drag values 0.0 -> 1.0 can be used to indicate progress from
0% to 100%. If the theme does not provide this it needs a script message
handler. When a message ID 2 is sent – it is a float message and the float is
from 0.0 to 1.0 indicating progress. In addition a “exquisite” “progress”
signal is sent when the dragable position is set.

Optional support:

1. Respond to “exquisite” “tick” signals visually some how. One of these
indicates the system is still alive and booting, but cannot indicate a
change in progress.
2. Provide a “exquisite.title” part that can hold a title text. When text is
changed a “exquisite” “title” signal is also emitted. If this part does not
exist a script message handler shoudl exist and handle string messages with
ID 0 that contain the new title.

Please see the default.edc file for details on some of the above. Script
message versions are not demonstrated at this time (though these can be much
more powerful).

Future Development:
——————-

Exquisite has started as a psplash replacement. This is a small splash
utility targetting embedded devices. Exquisite hopes to be more capable and
flexible with visual branding. It is very small and builds on the
Enlightenment Foundation Libraries to do its work. In future more features
would be good, such as handling user interaction (via buttons/keyboard or
touchscreen), as well as compatibility with usplash commands and features so
it can also be used as a drop-in desktop replacement for usplash. These
commands (and features) are:

TIMEOUT secs
Set a timeout in seconds between commands. If no command is received by the
timout, exit.
CLEAR
Clear all text.
TEXT text
Display the text given, and scroll up any previous text (if appropriate).
TEXT-URGENT text
Same as TEXT, but if verbosity is off, display this anyway.
STATUS status
Display the status string for the previous line of text given by the TEXT
cmmand.
SUCCESS status
Same as “STATUS” but consider it a positive outcome.
FAILURE status
Same as “STATUS” but consider it a negative outcome.
PULSATE
Start indicating progress with a throbber (no known progress position).
INPUT prompt
Display the prompt text and wait for a user to entry some text input. When
done write the result to /dev/.initramfs/exquisite_outfifo
INPUTQUIET prompt
Same as INPUT, but no user typing is displayed on the screen (eg a password
prompt).
INPUTENTER prompt
Same as INPUT – but displays no inptu on the screen and just waits for enter

Some other things like verbose vs. quiet mode will be nice.

Come potete vedere ho evidenziato le parti più importanti e succose: in futuro exquisite potrebbe essere usato come usplah ed essere appetibile per i nostri sistemi desktop. Speriamo… anche se avrei preferito l’annuncio di una possibile data di rilascio di e17…

come dargli una sbirciatina…

Innanzitutto abbiamo bisogno di cvs per scaricare exquisite: provvedete ad installarlo, se non lo avete già fatto, con il vostro gestore pacchetti. Se usate archlinux, come spero:

pacman -Sy cvs

Poi da terminale loggatevi al cvs e scaricate il programma:

cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.enlightenment.org:/var/cvs/e co e17/apps/exquisite

Adesso non ci resta che lanciare il demo:

cd e17/apps/exquisite/demo
./run-demo.sh

Carino, no??? Peccato che e17 non abbia la stessa mole di dev come kde!!! Altrimenti altro che kde4… ufff…

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