RE: [XCON] Discussion Point 3: Querying Templates

["Brian Rosen" <br at brianrosen.net>]

This is, and I think, should be, the way templates work.
There is an XML schema that defines the streams, floors and controls, in way
that suggests some things about UI.  It should be possible to render a
reasonable UI, albeit not a great one, by interpreting the schema with an
algorithm.

This only requires that we use some care in constructing the schema so that
a parser can guess how to render a UI.

As an example, if one has a stream, the schema should allow you to describe
controls that are related to that stream, so that you can group those
controls near one another.  This implies you might have a schema where, for
example, controls were defined as child elements of a stream.

Considering this, and my prior email about naming conventions on streams,
take the following possible schema

....
<role name=participant>
  <stream name=audioIn dir=receive media=audio>
	<control type=valuator range=0-100 name=MasterVolume/>
  </stream>
  <stream name=audioOut dir=send media=audio>
	<control type=Boolean name=Mute default=false/>
  </stream>
</role>

You could see how to render a reasonable UI from that.

So, your questions:
> Is this an important property? 
Yes
> If so, what is the format in which the
> template description should be presented? 
XML Schema defined in document, forms the Template part of the object

> Does the client retrieve this
> description from the server itself, or is there some centralized
> repository to get these descriptions from? 
Both.  The primary schema can be retrieved from IANA given the name of the
template.  The xcon server should also return it when asked

> Can it be the same as the XML
> schema that is registered with IANA? 
Yes, I think it is exactly the schema in the template document
> Is this description sent at the
> same time as the list of templates is sent to the client, or does a
> client need to explicitly ask about templates that it doesn't
> understand? 
The latter
> If we use the XML schema to describe the template, should we
> include user interface "hints" that allow clients to intelligently
> decide whether to display values as (e.g.) a slider versus a knob versus
> a number that can be typed in?
Yes, sort of.  This is part of the template work, please read that draft.
I don't want to suggest slider vs knob.  I do want to suggest valuator vs
toggle button.

Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xcon-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:xcon-bounces at ietf.org] On Behalf Of
> Adam Roach
> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 3:30 PM
> To: XCON-IETF
> Subject: [XCON] Discussion Point 3: Querying Templates
> 
> [as chair]
> 
> At the Boston meeting, there was a consensus around the ability to query
> a server that implements the XCON protocols to determine which templates
> it understands.
> 
> There was some additional discussion, but no consensus, around the
> ability to query a server about a particular template to retrieve a
> description -- probably an XML document, but possibly in some other form
> -- of that template. The idea behind this functionality would be
> enabling clients to interact with templates that they don't natively
> understand. That is, by extracting the variables from the template
> description and presenting them to the user in some format that allows
> manipulation of their values, all clients can work with all templates,
> even those that were not defined when the client was developed.
> 
> Is this an important property? If so, what is the format in which the
> template description should be presented? Does the client retrieve this
> description from the server itself, or is there some centralized
> repository to get these descriptions from? Can it be the same as the XML
> schema that is registered with IANA? Is this description sent at the
> same time as the list of templates is sent to the client, or does a
> client need to explicitly ask about templates that it doesn't
> understand? If we use the XML schema to describe the template, should we
> include user interface "hints" that allow clients to intelligently
> decide whether to display values as (e.g.) a slider versus a knob versus
> a number that can be typed in?
> 
> /a
> 
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> XCON mailing list
> XCON at ietf.org
> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/xcon
> 




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