A flexible system for 3rd party software.
I have another idea:
I see two kinds of applications.
1) Viewers - viewers can display files with certain extensions of the filename
2) Other applications (some can also be seen as viewers)
The iLiad has a system for viewers in combination with the content lister.
As I see it, a file is shown in the contentlister if it has not a period as first character of the filename and there is no Manifest.xml, because then that determines what is displayed.
If the filetype is recognized as a known type generally an icon is displayed for the filetype + the filename and comment.
When selected, an associated viewer is started with the filename as parameter. If started by the Manifest.xml file, other parameters may be added, like pagenumber, orientation, zoomfactor and offsets.
Let us assume we want to test a new viewer, for, let us say, pdf-files.
It would be nice then to be able to put a pdf-viewer on a memory card, put it in the iLiad and the iLiad would automatically recognize that there is a new viewer and use that (if there is not already a pdf-viewer running).
How could that be accomplished?
When the iLiad is started, the last thing in the startup should be scanning the root directories of the internal memory, the cards and the USB stick (if present) in a certain order to look for a viewers directory.
This directory should contain files with the name of the extension and perhaps a special extension (like "pdf" or "pdf.def" of "doc" or "doc.def") and an icon-file, like "doc.png".
Each .def file should point to the viewer application on the same memory device.
The iLiad should then dynamically register this viewer as the one to use.
When the card is removed the viewer should be unregistered.
If the iLiad would have such a software mechanism it would be very easy to test new viewers without meddling with its internals yourself.
I thought something like this was originally planned by iRex. They can comment themselves.
As other applications would not have to be bound to filetypes and the contentlister, they could just be standalone programs on a memory device or like explained earlier installed permanently on the iLiad.
The we have a third kind of software: drivers, like an USB Keyboard driver, a modem driver, etc. etc.
These should also be testable in stand-alone version and maybe, later installable permanently in the iLiad.
If we use stand-alone versions the advantage is that all iLiads would have the same software/firmware, so that each additional application will run on each iLiad and generally will run after new system upgrades (ideally).
By the way, this system would also be nice to add your own icons for all kinds of files, without meddling with the iLiad internals yourself.
My 2 cents.
Last edited by henkvdg; 04-26-2007 at 03:24 PM.
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