Various Beginners Layout Questions

If you’re not re-scanning upon startup, then I guess that file will never change… Delete it and let mAirList re-cache/re-create it.

I think I may have come to my final question! Is it possible to turn-off that box at the top of the sceduler with the E by the side? (I’ve drawn a ring round it in the attached image). It brings-up something called an events scheduler when you click on it. I’ve managed to strip-out all the other functionality in the interests of simplifying the interface, but it would be the icing on the cake to get rid of this!

I also thought I might try write-protecting the ini files - that may help stop the effects of people meddling where we don’t want - at least if the application is closed and re-opened…?

Probably not to everyone’s taste, but I’m quite pleased with this layout!

Thanks for all the help, Glyn


Layout3.jpg

The ‘E’ box (and the ‘empty’ box beside it) don’t just give you access to the Event Scheduler. The ‘blank’ box will show you the time of the next planned Event, if you have any.

As far as I know, the Event Scheduler boxes can’t be ‘separately’ hidden: you would have to hide the entire Playlist Control Bar. If you do this, you need to set up some other way to toggle AUTO/ASSIST, and ‘press’ AUTO STOP/PLAY/NEXT. This might be keyboard keys, or it might be an external ‘programmable’ pad such as a small Tipro EPOS keyboard. I’d strongly suggest you also have a key/button to allow you to access the Events, since you don’t have a main (top of mAirList window) Toolbar either.

Since most stations use Event Schdeuler to run scripts which automagically insert things like ad breaks, playlist for next hour, etc.; it’s usually necessary to have it visible and usable. If you truly don’t need nor want it, post that specific request (Config option to show/hide Event Scheduler in Playlist Control Bar) in the Feature Request section of the Forum.

BFN
CAD

I’ve belatedly discovered :-[ that the MS XML Notepad needs at least v2.0 of the .NET Framework installed on your computer. Unless you already need .NET Framework for other reasons, it’s silly to install it just for that! (BTW, the XMLFox editor ALSO needs .NET Framework v2.0 or greater.)

An XML editor/viewer which has NO prerequisites is firstobject XML Editor, which doesn’t moan about some mAirList files (ones that include a DOCUMENT tag) This is an excellent freeware which you can get here:
http://www.firstobject.com/dn_editor.htm

TIP: When you first open it, set the Font with View, Font…; also use the splitter bar or View menu to show the XML tree and source. :wink:

BFN
CAD

Despite the fact it’s from Microsoft, the .NET Framework is not a bad concept. Because it makes software run on any OS given that the OS features a .NET runtime (or Mono on Linux, OSX etc.). On “older” systems including XP you need to install the runtime manually. Vista and future versions will provide it out-of-the box. I also believe that more and more software vendors will move to .NET over time.

For software developers, this is a very good thing, because they can provide software for multiple operating systems without compiling it separately and without the need to distribute multiple files. The .exe will run under both Windows (with .NET) and Linux (with Mono) etc. Microsoft also made the .NET technology an ISO standard, called “CLI”, so it’s not as propietary as most earlier “standards” from MS :wink:

Of course, there are some aspects I dislike about .NET, in particular:

  • The WinForms GUI components from the .NET interface are just wrappers around the legacy Windows GUI components. This means that on any other platform, the GUI objects need to be emulated. Mono includes a WinForms emulation which is able to emulate most components, but there is still a large number of .NET software which does not run on Linux+Mono because of this.

  • There is another platform which follows the exact same idea: Java. Why didn’t Microsoft declare Java as their standard instead of defining their own? Because they’re Microsoft.

Cad, I know you are an experienced programmer, and you’re probably as sceptical as I was when I first heard about .NET. But at second glance, it’s not such a bad idea. Nowadays, its becoming more and more important to provide software which will run on multiple platforms. CLI makes it very easy.

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure

I have used .NET and even written programs using it.

But most users will not have .NET installed unless they a) install all MS Updates without questioning them, or b) have some software which requires .NET to work.

Personally I don’t like .NET because it’s so cumbersome to program in, and also because it turns every programming language (including Visual BASIC[.NET]) into some cross-breed of C and Pascal. There’s a very good reason why MS say ‘it doesn’t matter which .NET language you use for your programs!’ It’s because every .NET compiler is more-or-less merely a wrapper/‘interpreter’ for .NET Framework classes (and methods, and attributes, and …).

BFN
CAD

But isn’t that true for any traditional programming language? You have a few generic language constructs, plus a huge collection of library functions to call. The latter is the same in all .NET languages, and you can pick the former according to your personal preferences.

What annoys me is that in .NET, the constructs have all been made effectively the same as well, and have been forced along C/Pascal lines.

VB.NET source looks NOTHING like VB6 source, and is more tedious to write because all of a sudden, VB programmers are forced to cast variables between types (e.g. assigning a number to a string variable or vice versa), instead of letting the compiler do all that dull boring stuff. Hence it takes at least twice as long to write than the VB6 equivalent would.

(Let’s stop this now: we’re WAY off topic!)

BFN
CAD