User guide

Introduction
GUI description

Menubar
Toolbar
Tree panel
Status line
Popup menu

visually represent the filesystem using tree-like hierarchy
perform common operations on multimedia files: copy, delete, rename, etc.
perform advanced operations on files
stream any file through the network
play the selected movie

The user has to know a few things about the application in order to use it properly. What the user see is first of all a graphical client application. Displaying and interacting with the user is its main purpose. All operations the user requests to do are forwarded through the network to the specific server application. That is why for the client application to work the corresponding servers must be set up. The user client communicates with servers to perform file system operations in the way invisible to the user. If the client can not communicate it presents the user with the appropriate error message.

The main window of the application is presented in picture. It consists of four parts: menubar, toolbar, tree panel an status line. Popup menu is the fifth important component of the GUI.

GUI description

Menubar

System

Connect: Initializes connection with the VFS server. It performs logging on to the server and retrieving the initial file system hierarchy. After the succesful completing of the Connect operation the tree panel contains visual representation of the multimedia files found on the server. The Connect operation must be invoked before performing any operation on multimedia files. The parameters used in connecting and logging onto the server are described later in this paragraph (Login Parameters)
Show clipboard: Opens the dialog box showing the contents of the clipboard. The clipboard is a buffer used during copying files. It holds the names of files to be copied. This dialog box is used to make sure that the files in the clipboard are the ones the user wants to copy. The operations involving the clipboard are described later (Copy and Paste).
Close: Terminates the application.

Options

Login Parameters

Enables the user to provide the parameters used in communication with the server:

Name Server - URL pointing to a file which contains IOR reference to the Naming Service
VFS Server - the name in the Naming Service that VFS server is registered with
Username, Password - the login parameters used during logging on to the VFS server
SM Server - the name of the SM server in the Naming Service
Username, Password - the login parameters used during logging on to the SM server

Icons

Used to specify icon types displayed in the tree panel.

Refresh Time

The time in seconds between the operations of automatic retrieving the contents of the filesystem from the server. The client application performs this operation everytime its timer exceeds this number of seconds. Specifying zero disables automatic refresh. In this situation the user has to use the manual refresh method.

Sort Order

Specifies how the files in the tree are sorted. There are two options: ascending and descending. The files are sorted by their names and the directories are always displayed before files.

Change Password

Used to change the user password on the server.

Save Options

Allows to save current values of configurable options (login parameters, icons, etc.) into the file .svda_client located in the user home directory. This option is not supported in the applet version of the client.

Toolbar

Refresh Now: Pressing this button performs the operation of retrieving the filesystem contents from the server and refreshing the tree if necessary.
Stop (thread): Terminates the background operation of communicating with the server. It should only be used in situations when background operation can not normally complete eg. server failure.
Show Request List: Opens the window displaying the list of requests for the movie (look at the picture). When the user selects different movies from the tree it changes its contents accordingly. For each request there are five parameters shown: request ID, title of the movie, the user requesting the movie, the time request was issued, the time the movie is requested on. From this window the user can cancel the specific request by pressing the Cancel button.
Status: Opens the window showing the attibutes of the selected movie (look at the picture). It changes its contents when the user selects different movies.

Tree panel

the popup menu

Status line

At the bottom of the application window there is a text field in which messages are displayed. Each operation causes a message to be displayed describing the current state of the operation or the error when the operation failed. In the lower-right corner of the window there is a text label indicating whether the background operation is currently being executed. Normally this label shows a minus `-' sign, and when the background operation is active it shows a letter `R'.

Popup menu

the popup menu

Copy

Stores the selected movies' names in the clipboard. These names are then used in the Paste operation.

Paste

Copies the movies from the clipboard into the selected directory.

Delete

Removes selected items from the filesystem.

Rename

Changes the name of the selected item.

MkDir

Creates a new subdirectory in the selected one.

Lock, Unlock

Locks the selected movie for the specified time.

Insert

Creates a new movie in the selected directory. The film contents is created from the data that comes from the specified address. The adress might be either a multicast or a unicast one (in the latter case the source must take advantage of TCP whilst streaming data). Data is stored up to the data stream is stopped.

Play

Orders the SM server to start streaming the selected movie. The adress where data is sent to is automatically chosen by the program. The movie being played can be stopped by pressing the Stop playing button of the Toolbar. The stream is delivered to the computer that runs the SVDA client using unicast UDP connection.
Warning: This option is available only for a standalone form of the java program as only the standalone application is able to automatically run an external player (see How to start using the system).

Play at

Instructs the SM server to start streaming the selected movie to the specified address on the network. The movie being played can be stopped by pressing the `Stop playing' button of the Toolbar. If the client is started as a standalone application selecting Play at runs the external player application which receives the stream and plays the movie. Otherwise data is streamed but the responsibility of playing a film is shifted to an external application (e.g. JMF Player).

ChMod

Changes the permission mode of the selected item. Available modes :

r - reading
w - writing
rw - reading and writing

ChOwn

Changes the owner of the selected item.

Request

Requests the selected movie to be available for playing on the specified time.

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