[REBOL] rebol and kiosk systems embedding ...
From: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 12-Oct-2002 9:51
Hello,
part of our project is gonna be - KIOSK systems. We just looked into
some at Invex computer show. They are pretty expensive, so we will
eventually produce few kiosk systems ourselves. However - the questioin
is - software. We can go several routes:
1) by some 3rd party software - but we are not sure they will sell us
without their kiosk system.
2) build such sw ourselves. What is needed?
a) customized browser, which will run in full screen mode and will
prevent user of touch screen to leave the environment back to OS
desktop. Such environment has to provide us with the ability to display
virtual keyboard, which would allow to enter urls, fill in forms, etc.
b) it has to allow for the admin to enter allowed urls, etc. - we
don't want to let ppl to browse the whole web, right? :-) (maybe kind of
a proxy would be needed?)
c) maybe to allow even visual mixture with Rebol code, - dialog
appearance - but can we have forced (modal, non-modal - I never know
which one represents what, but you surely understand :-) rebol based
window in the front of other screen content?
Several ways to implement 2)
A) do everything in rebol and forget browser - not too much acceptable,
as I would lost ability to delegate design work to designer, who is not
fluent with VID (although he will learn it in the future). The idea is
to allow combination of e.g. browser, dialog boxes in rebol, full-screen
rebol content, Scala Multimedia content etc, we will see how it can all
be combined
B) use browser - but as I said - we would have to be able to adapt
browser's environment, to allow some custom buttons for the kiosk
purpose, virtual keyboard display, etc. We would definitely go with
Mozilla (cross platform) and probably XUL, but I am not sure yet, if it
will allow us to customize UI to our liking. If anyone is experienced in
that area, I would appreciate some input here ...
some XUL references:
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/xulref/ - programmer's guide?
http://www.xulplanet.com/ - portal ...
C) what we saw during the show was - external configurable environments,
with embedded browser (mostly IE I think). I tried to look into Mozilla
embedding API, but it seems pretty complex to me. Well - I am not sure I
want to create cross-platform rebol browser anyway (although it could
help IOS a lot, as it misses just that kind of integration - no ability
to display embedded html content). I would like to ask, if anyone tried
to embed external app into View face? Is that even possible technically?
Simply not linking Rebol to Mozilla API, but to tell Mozilla to run
inside defined window. But I am not sure it would be sufficient, as
parameters would have to be exchanged between those two anyway (virtual
keyboard entry e.g.)
Embedding Mozilla API link (for those, who are skilled enough and would
provide rebol community with a gift of getting ability to display web
content into View layout. Mozilla is free and cross-platform, so no
problem on that side, what would be needed to distribute is just Mozilla
run-time and rebol wrappers :-)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/embedapiref/embedapiTOC.html
Well, as always, I will appreciate any kind of input.
Thanks a lot,
-pekr-
