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Analysis

Overview

This group of tasks covers the basics of Timelines. It describes the model (internal structure) and the user interactions (external structure) related to timelines. After this iteration we should have a prototypical timeline model with a simple user interface to demonstrate it.

Task requirements

• Define and describe the basic concepts of timelines:
  • Define what a timeline is:
    • are timelines defined for the whole book, for a page, or something else.
    • what different kinds of timelines exist (single page/multiple page, etc.).
    • how are timelines and links working together:
      • are timelines triggerred by links or vice versa?
      • what happens if a user triggers a link while a timeline is playing?
      • can several timelines be playing simultaneously?
    • define what timeline channels are and what objects they can hold.
    • define whether a timeline is a ProObject, a Resource or something else.
  • Define what a timeline entry is:
    • it should contain the object it affects, a start time, a duration and an action to be performed (or whatever is needed).
    • define what actions will be allowed (showing/hiding frames, playing media, etc.).
  • Describe the design in the (Timelines Design) section of the Timelines wiki page.
• Implement a basic timeline model considering the things defined.
  • Provide basic support for timeline manipulation - list, create, destroy, add/remove channel, add/remove entry, play, stop, etc.
• Define and provide a simple user interface to manipulate timelines.
  • This is 'proof of concept' only and can be quite simple and ugly - for example a table.

Task result

• Source code
• Wiki page

Implementation idea

Most of the things in the task requirements have been defined in the discussion about timelines, held on 2009-04-24. See the Timelines discussion log for more information on these concepts.

Related

TIMELINES

How to demo

• Create a book containing a couple of pages with timelines.
• Add some actions to the timelines and play them.
• Describe the concepts and show the wiki page.
• Provide a brief overview of the code.

Design

This is the content of the TIMELINES/Design page that will document the design of the timelines.

Here you will find a detailed description of the internal and external design of timelines and some draft diagrams of the user interface. This is based on the discussion about timelines held on 2009-04-24 (see the discussion log). Timelines in Sophie 2.0 have a lot of differences from the timelines in Sophie 1. They are meant to be simple and powerful at the same time.

User interactions

A book in Sophie2 cannot have timelines than span all over it. Instead, each page of the book has its own timeline (that can be only one). Each group of objects on the page can also have its own single timeline. This separation ensures that there won't be situations when the timeline says the user is simultaneously on more than one page and prevents having actions involving a frame that is not on the current page. It is a substitute to the single/multiple page timelines in Sophie 1.0. The timelines of the grouped objects provide more interactive content. For example, a movie playing or some objects moving while a table of contents is shown is now possible.

Each timeline visually has three parts - intro, main part and outro. The intro and outro cannot be looped, while the main part can. By default both the intro and outro are 0 seconds long, while the main part is infinitely looped with all objects on the page shown (or hidden if the author has provided so). This will ensure that if an author wants a simple book with no interactions and animations, he doesn't have to bother with timelines. On the other hand, it is robust enough for the experienced. The intro and outro allow fade in/out effects to be created not only for the page, but for grouped elements as well.

There are two areas of timeline channels. The first one contains group channels - one for each group of elements on the page. This channel is specialised for this group and can contain only entries holding this group. This will prevent constructing invalid sets of actions by overlapping the same object on several channels. Still, it will provide flexibility to work with multiple channels and objects easily. The second type of channeles is the so called "event channels" . They do not hold an object or group that is on the page. Instead, they can hold an audio resource or eventually some specific events (for example opening a book in a new window). There can be several such channels, similarly to what Sophie 1 allows.

When a page is entered, its timeline starts playing automatically, showing the intro, main part and outro. The user will be able to skip the intro and outro. If the main part is not looped, the next page will be shown automatically after the timeline of the current stops playing. If it is looped, it will show continuously until the user (or a link action triggered by the timeline) requests to go to another page. In such case, the outro is shown. Timeline playback cannot be controlled by links. The user, however, will be able to pause the timeline and change the position of the head in the bottom flap timelines panel.

As a start, timelines will be able to control the visibility of page elements and the state of the media. Additional actions might be supported at a later stage. The current LinkActions for Hide/Show/Toggle Frame will be used.

This concept of timelines allows for easy implementation of the most popular of their uses - a slide show of photos with audio annotations and a table of contents or dvd-like menu. The design should be still flexible enough to allow plenty of other uses of timelines.

Internal design

Timelines, channels and timeline entries will be pro-objects instead of resources (similarly to links, linк actions, triggers and rules). Each page will keep references to its timeline. The same applies for each group of page elements. For each of these groups, a channel will be added to the timeline.

Each timeline will keep a list of channels and a reference to its parent, i.e. the page it controls. Timelines will have methods for playing, stopping, jumping to a location, adding and removing of channels and entries, etc. Timelines cannot be created or deleted by the user. They are automatically created for each page and group of page elements.

Each channel will contain a reference to the group of elements it holds and a list of timeline entries. Group channels are added automatically and cannot be created/deleted by the user. This does not apply to channels for audio and misc actions.

There will be two types of entries. Each entry will have a start time and a duration. Group channel entries will play the timeline of the corresponding element. If that timeline's length is finite, the duration of the entry cannot exceed it. Entries for the event channels will perform the action specified instead of playing the timeline of the element.

Here follow the internal details like classes, modules, etc.

For now, the base classes for timelines will be in the org.sophie2.base.model.book module, in a separate package (timelines). If needed, at a later stage, timelines, links and scripting can be separated to their own interactivity module. The base classes for the model are Timeline, Channel, TimelineEntry and EventTimelineEntry.

A new module for the UI and manipulation of timelines will be created - org.sophie2.main.func.timelines. It will hold classes for the user interface and the interactions, manipulating the timelines. At first, it will provide a very simple (and ugly) interface for demonstration purposes only ('proof of concept'). It will be changed at the next revision of the task or at some of the other tasks related to timelines.

It will contain a table with one row for each channel and one column for each second of the timeline. At first timelines will be with a fixed duration of 10 seconds. Each cell in the timeline will have a checkbox showing whether the corresponding element is visible or not. This table will be placed in a TimelinesPalette in the bottom flap. The existing timelines tab will be removed from the left flap.

Here follow a dependency and a class diagram for the timelines model:

Intial tests are provided in the attached patches.

Implementation

As a start, the bottom flap has been added to the application. This required great refactoring of the MDMainWindow class as well as some skinning and other minor fixes. The unnecessary TimelinesTab has been removed as well. [2401]

Taking the 'design by contract' approach, extensive javadoc has been written to all methods in the base module. Timeboxing requires reducing the scope so not all of them will be implemented, but still enough information for them is present. [2409]

The basic part of the model is implemented with some minor changes to the design. A GroupChannel class is created and timeline entries are only represented by the TimelineEntry class. At the current stage, the intro and outro are not used. There is a channel for each frame instead of each group of page elements (since groups need reimplementation). Event channels are also not implemented at the current stage. [2415], [2435]

The basic UI consists of a table containing a row for each channel and a column for each second of the length of the timeline. There's a checkbox in each cell that controls the frame visibility in that second. Playing, pausing, rewinding the timeline and looping is supported from the UI as well. [2458]

Final tuning of the classes layout and javadoc was performed in changeset [2466].

Since the user interface is for temoral use only, the UI test has been deleted. [2468]

Here's a list of known issues that should be fixed in the next iteration of this task or in another task:

• When changing to preview mode sometimes there's a mydoggy exception about reinitializing the same flap twice.
• When changing to preview mode sometimes the timeline duplicates its channels.

Testing

^{Place the testing results here.}

Comments

I've added some suggestions for how the timeline UI could work TIMELINES/UserInterface. --danvisel, 29-04-09.