Slideshow remote control support in Impress

[pluby]

In his very limited spare time over the last month or so, Ed has been working in adding the ability to start, stop, and move through a slide show in Impress using the remote control device that Apple ships with newer Macs.

Special thanks go to Martin Kahr who developed the Remote Control Wrapper. By providing this open source framework, Ed could focus on the tedious and fussy work of integrating Martin Kahr's code into the OpenOffice.org code.

Here is how the remote control support works. When an Impress window is the active window in NeoOffice, pressing the Start/Pause (>||) key will start a slideshow. When in the slideslow, the following actions are available:

1. Pressing the Track Forward (>>|) key will move forward a slide
2. Pressing the Track Backward (|<<) key will move back a slide
3. Pressing the Start/Pause (>||) key will end the slideshow

You can test the remote control support support by installing the following test patch:

PowerPC:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-2-Test-3-PowerPC.dmg

Intel:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-2-Test-3-Intel.dmg

Patrick

[ovvldc]

Sweet!

-Oz

[OPENSTEP]

Also note that this will also work with the Keyspan Front Row Remote for computers that do not have the Apple remote built-in. Martin Kahr added support for that in his wrapper, and that's primarily what I used to develop and test.

The primary thing I'd like people to keep an eye out for is starting presentations with the Play button...in earlier versions of my code, if I pressed Play many times quickly Neo would freeze. I think I got rid of that problem, but have primarily tested on PowerPC.

ed

[ovvldc]

Not to be impatient, but will it work with an iPhone?

Best wishes,
Oscar

[RO33]

After having read about this cool FrontRow feature I got the patch and it works great for me. Thank you very much!

[rpatrick]

I've tested fairly thoroughly and it works flawlessly for me! Great stuff.

[amayze]

I haven't tested the remote support much within Neo, but what I have done works fine. However I have one issue.

I use iTunes a lot to listen to podcasts. Normally once I've started listening to a podcast I can start and stop it with the remote whichever application is foremost.

However, with Test Patch 3 installed, when I run NeoOffice, the remote stops working in iTunes even if it is the front most app. Also the Menu button no longer calls up FrontRow.

Further if I open a presentation, and then bring iTunes to the front, when I press Play the presentation starts in the background. Further button presses do nothing, neither advancing or stopping the presentation or having an effect on iTunes.

Normal functioning of the remote returns as soon as I quit NeoOffice.

Personally, I am never going to use the remote with Impress, my job doesn't involve giving presentations. However if I have to quit NeoOffice every time I sit at my workbench rather than my computer desk so I can stop whatever is playing in iTunes (usually the Archers) when a customer comes in, it will become a little tiresome.

Is what I've described a bug, or is it just the way that the remote works when two apps want to use it? If the latter could we have an option to turn off the remote support?

Cheers,

Andy.

[pluby]

It sounds like the Mac OS X remote control driver is delivering remote control actions to all applications and not just the active application.

What type of remote control do you have? The Apple remote control that your machine shipped with or a third party remote?

Also, what happens if you quit NeoOffice and open a movie in the QuickTime Player application? Do you get the same issues?

Patrick

[OPENSTEP]

I believe the current implementation may block the remote from being used by other apps. The Remote Control framework looks like it's going through IOKit and grabbing exclusive access to the remote USB device whenever it's listening, which will block it from being used by other applications while we're attached to it (which, right now, is whenever Neo is running).

I'll look into getting Neo to release/unrelease the remote when its not the foreground app. I'm not sure if I can install a delegate on NSApp though.

ed

[pluby]

So I just took a quick look at the Remote Control Wrapper open source framework that we use and it seems that it registers itself for remote control actions by sending an event a "mac.remotecontrols.RequestForRemoteControl" to the NSDistributedNotificationCenter.

I don't see any matching release events so maybe the problem is that the Remote Control Wrapper is getting exclusive access to the remote control dispatching service and is never releasing its control.

Patrick

[pluby]

We found the documentation for releasing control of the remote control dispatching service when NeoOffice stops being the active application and Ed is implementing the minor changes that are needed to do this.

When Ed checks in the changes (probably in the next day or so), I will respin another test patch that you can try.

Patrick

[OPENSTEP]

Patrick's code works OK. As a result, the remote will only be grabbed when NeoOffice is the frontmost running application.

Of course, this doesn't solve the case of wanting to use the remote control to control iTunes while Neo is the front app. To do this I added an additional preference check. Note that right now it cannot be set via the Neo user interface, but you can do it with a Terminal

To disable the remote control in Neo completely, open a terminal and do the following:

[sardisson]

[pluby]

[pluby]

I have implemented a fix to ensure that NeoOfficed releases control of the remote control device when it is not the active application in the following test patch. Also, Ed's fix that allows you to manually turn off the remote control support if needed is also in the following test patch:

PowerPC:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-2-Test-4-PowerPC.dmg

Intel:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-2-Test-4-Intel.dmg

Patrick