Panel that updates every N seconds

[bialio]

There are quite a few ways to do this in studio. IS there a preferred / recommended way?

I like the simplicity of using the Animation attribute (0, seconds, 0) to set this up, but I don't want to use something that will eventually be phased out....

btl.

[jaminben]

Can't say I've ever seen the Animation attribute way of doing it.... sounds pretty interesting.

Anyway, I always prefered using a Hook with Fork() Wait(100) RefreshArea("Panel").... pretty much the same way Sage does it when media is playing e.g with music and you get the play length shown.

[PLUCKYHD]

Yup a fork and refresh is the best way. Just as long as you make sure you are checking a variable and killing the fork(thread) when it is no longer needed and not leaving it going.

[bialio]

Do you usually put the Fork in the after menu load hook?

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by bialio

Do you usually put the Fork in the after menu load hook?

Depends on how many times you want to refresh the panel in question, if the panel is always visable etc. Also if you dont Fork it and you add a Wait it will cause screen delay if your wanting to refresh that panel multiple times.

EDIT

I think I missunderstood your question.... what do you want to refresh, how soon should it be refreshed and is it always visable?

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by bialio

Do you usually put the Fork in the after menu load hook?

That depends on what you are wanting to do. If you are drawing the panel on load with contents and then want it to refresh after so long and continue to do so yes. Then in beforemenuunload you would change your variable to kill the fork since the panel won't be there anymore.

[bialio]

Thanks guys - I think that covers the forking/wait approach pretty well. And yes, it's a panel that's always visible that needs to be updated every so often as long as the menu is loaded.

Opus - is the Animation attribute scheduled for decomission anytime soon? The Studio manual hints that this might be so, but I do see it being used a bit in the default STV....

btl.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by bialio

Thanks guys - I think that covers the forking/wait approach pretty well. And yes, it's a panel that's always visible that needs to be updated every so often as long as the menu is loaded.

Opus - is the Animation attribute scheduled for decomission anytime soon? The Studio manual hints that this might be so, but I do see it being used a bit in the default STV....

btl.

Are you talking the new animation widget or the AnimateTransition and such old calls? I will say that the old calls are pretty inefficient in my testing.

[bialio]

Not those calls. It's the OTHER usage of that field:

When used to automatically update the display of itself and all of its children, there are
two ways to specify an animation property:
1. The first is using a Start,Period,Duration value for the property. This is just 3 nonnegative integers separated by commas. The first value indicates the delay after
initial display of the menu to begin animation. The second value is the time
between animation updates. And the third value is the time the animation should
last for after it has begun; 0 implies forever. All 3 values are in millisec

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by bialio

Not those calls. It's the OTHER usage of that field:

Ah yeah that hmm that should work but probably isn't very efficient either. I remember using that back in the SMW days . I had forgotten that even existed.

[bialio]

Not everything has to be efficient Sometimes easier is better....

btl.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by bialio

Not everything has to be efficient Sometimes easier is better....

btl.

[jaminben]

If I were you all I'd do is:

1. Add an attribute widget in the main menu called "IsMenuLoaded" = false
2. In the beforemenunload hook add an Action Widget "IsMenuLoaded" = true
3. In the beforemenuunloaded hook add an Action Widget "IsMenuLoaded" = false

Now your all set to add your looping fork.

Fork()
   "REM Start Panel Refresh"
     Wait(100)
        IF IsMenuLoaded
           RefreshArea("YourPanel")
              Link back to "REM Start Panel Refresh"

[bialio]

The problem I have with that is you can end up with thread creep - if you exit the menu, and come back while this fork is sleeping, you end up with TWO threads refreshing the panel.

1 gets created when you come back to the menu. The other wakes up after you came back, and it's variable (IsMenuLoaded) is true, so it keeps on chuggin'

SO then you have to keep track of if you started a thread already....

btl.

[jaminben]

Ahhh, you noticed this as well

There is a way around this if your Wait() time is quite long..... create a sub Timed loop within the Fork(). So basically what I did is shown in the attached screenshot.... obviously if you can leave the menu and come back again within 10ms your going to get your creep

But so far I've not been able to do this in my testing and there is no slowdown as its still all contained within the original Fork().

Maybe I'm doing it wrong..... someone will no doubt shout if I am.

[bialio]

Cool - that looks like a good method. I'll give it a try.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by bialio

Not everything has to be efficient Sometimes easier is better....

btl.

I have always used the Animation Panel property instead of the Fork()-Refresh() technique. After reading this thread I don't see why the Fork()-Refresh() tecnique is better. It certianly is harder to implement and seem to be more error prone.

And FWIW the three non-negative integers specify the milliseconds, so 0,1000,0 animates the panel once a second.

What's wrong with using the panel Animate property?

[bialio]

This statement from the Studio manual is what concerns me :

Important Note: The Effect Widget should be used for animations for SageTV version 7
and newer, instead of the layer animation system. The layer animation system and API
calls are still available for use by older STVs but it is likely that it will be removed from a
future version of SageTV. All new STV development should use effect widget

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by bialio

This statement from the Studio manual is what concerns me :

I'm not referring to using it for animations, I'm referring to using the panel property for refreshing. Animations and refreshing are two very different things. Maybe they need to change the panel property to "Refresh" instead of "Animate".

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

What's wrong with using the panel Animate property?

I didn't know it did that.... you learn something new every day

However it wouldn't work for my case example as within each 120ms animation loop I needed to load a new image. I've attched a small video I made which shows 6 forked threads running (5 for weather and 1 music playback).

I don't know if you can remember the old Track & Field game made by Ocean way back in the eighties where you had to hammer the keys to make the athelete run faster? Well thats what I did to test this out trying to get it to creep and I couldn't...... 10ms is rather quick