SDGT - The Single Display Groupware Toolkit

The SDG Toolkit is a framework for designing single display groupware applications. SDGT is a COM object designed for managing multiple mice and keyboards.

To learn more about the SDG Toolkit read our CSCW Paper

Download

• Toolkit
• Example Programs (see Sample Notes)

Overview

The SDG Toolkit simplifies Single Display Groupware development by providing the following features.

• Automatic detection of all USB and serial windows mice and keyboards present in the system  
• Event-based interface for detecting mouse movements and button clicks, and keyboard events
• Display of multiple cursors, one for each mouse
• Individually customizable cursors (loaded from .bmp, .cur and .ani files), hotspots and text labels/fonts
• Coordinates relative to any window
• Movement Restriction to the window
• For table top displays where orientation matters, cursor text labels can be rotated, and mouse movements can be set relative to the different sides of the table (see figure above).

Limitations:

• Only works with Windows XP!
• Mice are not hot swappable as the SDG application is running

	sdgControl

Properties

sdgMouse

Property	Access	Description
X as long	Get, Put by Reference	Returns or sets the current X coordinate of the cursor.  If the X coordinate is set the cursor will be moved
Y as long	Get, Put by Reference	Returns or sets the current Y coordinate of the cursor.  If the Y coordinate is set the cursor will be moved
DegreeRotation as long	Get, Put by Reference	For table top displays: Returns or sets the movement orientation of the cursor in degrees.  This feature is useful for table top display in which one user is kitty-corner or across the table from another user
FrameIndex as long	Get, Put by Reference	For animated cursors only: Returns or Sets the current frame in an animated cursor. Ignored if an animated cursor is not used.
FrameTotal as long	Get by Reference	For animated cursors only: Returns the total number of frames in an animated cursor.  Example: g(2).FrameIndex = (g(2).FrameIndex + 1) Mod FrameTotal
Picture as String	Get, Put by Value	The file path of the image used to represent the cursor for the current mouse.  It must be a .bmp, .cur or .ani file.  Note: The file specified must be a 24-bit colour bitmap of any size, or a .cur file whose image size is a power of two.
HotSpotX as long	Get, Put by Reference	Returns or sets the cursor X hotspot location
HotSpotY as long	Get, Put by Reference	Returns or sets the cursor Y hotspot location
Text as String	Get, Put by Value	Sets the text caption for the cursor
TextFont as String	Get, Put by Value	Sets the font of the cursors text label.  Text Font will default to Arial if that font is not found.
TextRotation as long	Get, Put by Reference	For table top displays: Sets the rotation of the text caption.  This follows the same direction as the Degree Rotation property.  The example on the right shows a text caption rotated by 180°.
TextX as long	Get, Put by Reference	Sets or returns the location of the X text caption relative to the top left corner of the cursor
TextY as long	Get,Put By Reference	Sets or returns the location of the Y text caption relative to the top left corner of the cursor

Example Programs

These sample programs are included in the Example Programs zip file.

• SDG Minimal Sketch - The minimum amount of code required to create a simple sketch application
• SDG Sketch Pad - Illustrates how to use the sdg toolkit to create a simple drawing application.

• SDG Widget - Illustrates how the sdg toolkit is designed to work with any VB widget

• SDG Keyboard - Illustrates how the sdg toolkit is designed to work with keyboards

Below is the full code required to make the minimal sketch program

Dim WithEvents g As sdgControl
Dim drawNow As Boolean

Private Sub Form_Load()
    
    drawNow = False
    Set g = New sdgControl
    g.setRelativeTo Form1.hWnd
    
End Sub

Private Sub g_MouseDown(ByVal MouseNumber As Long, ByVal Button As Long, ByVal X As Long, ByVal Y As Long)
    drawNow = True
End Sub

Private Sub g_MouseMove(ByVal MouseNumber As Long, ByVal Button As Long, ByVal X As Long, ByVal Y As Long)
    If drawNow = True Then
        Form1.DrawWidth = (MouseNumber + 1) * 2
        Form1.Line (X, Y)-(X + 1, Y + 1)
    End If
End Sub

Private Sub g_MouseUp(ByVal MouseNumber As Long, ByVal Button As Long, ByVal X As Long, ByVal Y As Long)
    drawNow = False
End Sub

This web site was created by Edward Tse, the last update was August 22, 2002 03:22 PM

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