VirtualDJ - Mac Plugin Development

djcel

PRO InfinityModeratorMember since 2004

A new video plugin with source code is now available for Mac

http://www.virtualdj.com/addons/8616/Pandora_s_Box.html

Posted Tue 14 Jul 09 @ 6:00 pm

djcel

PRO InfinityModeratorMember since 2004

Only for your information


void ErrorMessage(CFStringRef inMessage,CFStringRef inExplanation, AlertType inAlertType)
{
	DialogRef	AlertDialog;
	DialogItemIndex index;
	
	// Create Dialog
	CreateStandardAlert(kAlertStopAlert, inMessage, inExplanation, NULL, &AlertDialog);
	
	// Run Dialog
	RunStandardAlert(AlertDialog, NULL, &index);
}


ErrorMessage(CFSTR("Unknown Error"), CFSTR("There was an error in the plugin"), kAlertStopAlert);

By using an identifier, you can easily have access to your own plugin and get the filepath of it:


CFStringRef getPluginPath(CFStringRef bundleCFStringRef)
{
CFStringRef PluginPath;

CFBundleRef PluginBundleRef = CFBundleGetBundleWithIdentifier(bundleCFStringRef);
CFURLRef FolderURL = CFBundleCopyResourcesDirectoryURL(PluginBundleRef);
CFURLRef FolderURLAbsolute = CFURLCopyAbsoluteURL(FolderURL);
PluginPath = CFURLGetString(FolderURLAbsolute);

return PluginPath;
}

CFStringRef PluginPath
PluginPath = Load(CFSTR("com.atomixprod.beatgrid"));

Posted Sun 19 Jul 09 @ 9:57 pm

djcel

PRO InfinityModeratorMember since 2004

I'm now going to use the following identifiers for all my Mac plugins (see the "Info.plist" file under the key "CFBundleIdentifier").

com.djcel.VirtualDJVideoPlugin.{PluginName}
com.djcel.VirtualDJSoundPlugin.{PluginName}
com.djcel.VirtualDJTransitionPlugin.{PluginName}

where {PluginName} is the name of your plugin (remove the {} )

Feel free to use the same idea in your plugins (with your name instead of "djcel" of course)

Posted Mon 20 Jul 09 @ 5:10 am

VOG_

PRO InfinityMember since 2006

I don't mean to sound like a broken record but I was wondering if anyone has made any progress on developing a mac text plugin

I feel it's a serious lack in the vdj for mac product

Posted Mon 20 Jul 09 @ 11:24 am

SBDJ

PRO Infinity Member since 2006

I know there has been some progress on that front so don't panic :)

I'll get around to porting Scrolltext too one day ;)

Posted Mon 20 Jul 09 @ 11:38 am

VOG_

PRO InfinityMember since 2006

The standard text would even be great at this point !

Posted Mon 20 Jul 09 @ 11:44 am

djcel

Member since 2004

Some news about the Text Plugin for Mac. Let me explain you why it takes so much time:

* As you know the mac version of VirtualDJ uses OpenGL (contrary to the PC version which uses DirectX so you can't take the code from one to the other one). However, OpenGL doesn't offer a support for fonts by default :-(
It exists of course other solutions to display some texts with advantages and disavantages. For example, GLUT is very easy to use but very limited too.
The text plugin has no interest, to my mind, if we can't change the font that's why we are forced to find a way to read them: it's called "freetype" ( http://www.freetype.org/ )

Quote :

What is FreeType 2?
FreeType 2 is a software font engine that is designed to be small, efficient, highly customizable, and portable while capable of producing high-quality output (glyph images). It can be used in graphics libraries, display servers, font conversion tools, text image generation tools, and many other products as well.

Note that FreeType 2 is a font service and doesn't provide APIs to perform higher-level features like text layout or graphics processing (e.g., colored text rendering, ‘hollowing’, etc.). However, it greatly simplifies these tasks by providing a simple, easy to use, and uniform interface to access the content of font files.

So then you need an interface (API) which displays this font in OpenGL (of course stable and optimized for real-time). For example, "FTGL"

* So yes it's possible to display text on a Mac and we already have a working plugin (since 1 year now).

* But, as there is always a but, it takes time and we have priorities.

PS: If another developper wants to help us on this project, feel free to contact me.

Posted Sat 16 Jan 10 @ 5:12 pm