(mgp-users 00082) Re: tgz files

[Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>]

> hi, i like the embedded feature in mgp.
> 
> i will have a bit of free time this christmas
> and was thinking of patching mgp to do presentations
> on "tgz" files. i.e. you put your whole presentation
> in a tar file (compressed or not), and mgp will
> automatically untar it and run the presentation,
> cleaning it up after it is done.

while useful, this would be a duplicate of mgpembed for once, and
of one feature of my multicast-enhanced version of mgp(mgpm), which
can save a whole presentation in a portable binary format that can
then be shipped to destination as a single file.

If you want to look at it, mgpm is at http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/mgpm/
(structured as a FreeBSD "port", i.e. a set of patches for the
latest snap of mgp) and the relevant features are in fileio.c

> other suggestions for possible features during a few
> days this xmas appreciated.

A few useful (imho) things would be:
 * add support for handling compressed files (e.g. postscript or
   various images), which is basically read from a pipe running
   gzip -dc;

 * add support for processing "transfig" files (e.g. generated by xfig);
   In the simplest form this just needs calling transfig for generating
   the postscript, but it would be best to integrate transfig routines
   into the rendering part of mgp (probably will take more than a few
   days);

 * look at the background generation routines -- right now they seem
   rather slow; maybe it could be possible to speed-up bg generation a
   little bit, and possibly even storing the generated background in
   some compressed format such as gif/png instead of a pixmap ?

 * (perhaps) define a special "filter" command which is processed at
   startup, instead of when the slide is shown.
   This would be useful to invoke TeX for generating formulas etc.
   (and also for shipping the pixmaps for the presentation into an
   embed-like file so that one does not need TeX at the receiving
   end;)

	cheers
	luigi
-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
  Luigi RIZZO                      .
  EMAIL: luigi@iet.unipi.it        . Dip. di Ing. dell'Informazione
  HTTP://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/  . Universita` di Pisa
  TEL/FAX: +39-050-568.533/522     . via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy)
-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------