Re: Newbie Question

[Stuart Booth]

On Tue, 18 May 2004 22:24:21 +0100, "Nigel Giddings"
<<a
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wrote:

>Another 'Newbie' here who has caught the xAP bug at UKHA2004 but is
>having difficulty getting started.
>
>Can I make a suggestion, could someone from the xAP group work with a
>group of 'Newbies' on some sort of simple install of the basic 'Hub'
and
>a representative list of Apps that give us confidence to deal with the
>more detailed stuff later...

*** STEP 1

There's a bit of an article on xAP Hubs to be found here:

<<a href="http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=7";>http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Sections&amp;op=viewarticle&amp;artid=7</a>>

It talks about the xAPFramework-based hubs though, so mainly Windows
only at this time (one of these days I'll find a crack of time to
explore Linux some more). There are others for Linux too, of which
Patrick can describe in more detail.

One thing worth knowing is that whilst a hub is essential to run
multiple xAPplications on the same machine, many xAPplications can
provide hub duties automatically. So you can just start one, any one,,
it'll detect that the lack of presence of a full xAP Hub and assume
the role for itself. All xAPFramework-based applications have this
ability built-in. You can customise this too, but that's another topic
for another day - and one that nobody has ever asked me about so I
guess it's unimportant at this stage.

Anyway, it's probably good to have a dedicated Hub without a lot of
fluff built on top. That's why my own comes in 3 flavours; console
mode, Windows Service and with a pretty GUI.

*** STEP 2

Personally speaking I'd suggest then moving onto something such as my
xAP Message Viewer application. This seems like a quite useful tool to
see what's going on and follow the interactions of various
xAPplications and xAP-talking devices.

You'll find lots of words and pretty pictures here:

<<a href="http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=8";>http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Sections&amp;op=viewarticle&amp;artid=8</a>>

With these 2 apps running you should see them hearing each other,
rather than directly talking to each other.

*** STEP 3

I guess Step 3 would be to actually send a xAP message of your own to
check everything is working fine. There are a couple of Send type apps
that take xAP messages from simple text files and send them off into
the xAP network.

These are useful not only for debugging and demonstrations, but you
can hook these into other applications that provide command line
execution hooks. E.g. you might be able to invoke another application
upon some event. Here you could predefine a xAP message as a text file
where native xAP support isn't (yet) present, and invoke a send
application with that file as a parameter.

Or you may just want to initiate something such as turning a light off
via X10 or whatever, by 2x clicking a file on your desktop.

Patrick has a version of this, and mine is available from this page:

<<a href="http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=4";>http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&amp;d_op=viewdownload&amp;cid=4</a>>

My version is Windows only (unless somebody fancies giving it a go
with Mono on Linux. Anyone?) and comes packaged as a Windows Installer
file that automatically associates itself with .xap files. There is a
ton of example messages contained within a "Sample Messages"
folder
upon installation.

SUMMARY

So now you should be seeing Hub and Viewer, each aware of each other,
and also have the ability to send messages. You'll be able to see them
arrive at Hub, be forwarded onto client applications (ie Viewer), and
be able to see a new node appear in the Viewer display.

I find Viewer fantastically useful for xAP network monitoring. There
were some truly impressive xAP node-network displays to be seen at
UKHA2004 for instance, stuff waaaaayyyy more detailed than I've ever
personally seen before.

It's unlikely that the GUI xAP Hub application will see much
enhancement as it starts to become kitchen-sink and unneeded. But
Viewer has a whole series of upgrades planned when I can find the
time.

Hopefully this gives a tiny bit of a feel for xAP. Ask away and
somebody can answer in more detail on various topics. I'm thinking
that if we waffle about the topics here then I can take the text and
use it as the basis for some web site articles. As much as I waffle in
emails, I don't find writing documentation to be particularly
interesting. It looks like I'm not alone! :)

HTH,

S
--
Stuart Booth <<a
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