I have an application which has sound. I have a global property to mute the sound. The problem is, there's so many different things which can make sound, I would hate to iterate through different class types and mute/unmute their sound. Instead, I'm looking for a way to mute the sound on a global application level. I don't mean muting the entire system volume either.
One scenario: In Windows 7, you can open the Volume Mixer and adjust the volume of individual applications. While I don't intend to change this actual particular value (as I know it's Windows 7 specific), I would like to change the volume of everything in my application all at once. I would also need the ability to completely mute the sound of everything in my application. I need this ability to be compatible with Windows XP and above. I am assuming it will involve Windows API calls, but I have no idea what calls to make.
XP does not support per-application volume control. That capability was added in Vista. So what you are attempting to do cannot be done in XP by fair means.
There is software called IndieVolume that retro fits per-app volume control to XP. I can only imagine it does so by means of low-level hacking, DLL injection and so on. I doubt that's really an option for you.
What you're asking for isn't possible on XP; the OS simply does not support per-application volume levels.
You can accomplish what you want by creating a settings class that keeps things like SoundActive: Boolean or PlaySounds: Boolean or something similar. Place it in it's own unit, and have an initialization section that creates an instance of it and a finalization section that frees it (making it effectively a collection of global values).
Each unit that needs access to these settings simply uses the unit containing them, and adjusts behavior accordingly. So each of your child classes or forms or whatever would just need a check added:
if CurrentSettings.PlaySounds then
// Code that makes sounds, plays music, whatever.
The settings class can also contain methods that keep track of the current volume level (on XP, the system-wide level), and methods to increase or decrease volume using the MMSystem volume functions (there are tons of examples here and through Google of doing so). Your app can then use the OnActivate and OnDeactivate events to set the volume level when your app gains focus, and restore it to the proper volume when your app loses focus.
In Vista and higher, you can use the IAudioEndPointVolume interface I mentioned earlier and either the GetMasterVolumeLevel or SetMasterVolumeLevel methods to control system wide volume (I have an example of doing this, along with the appropriate MMDevAPI interface definitions) or device level volume (using IMMDevioce.Activate to select the proper device first and then the above IAudioEndPointVolume methods on the device interface received from IMMDevice.Activate in the ppInterface parameter).
For individual applications, you use the ISimpleAudioVolume interface, which has four methods: GetMasterVolume and SetMasterVolume, which control the volume level for your application's audio session, and GetMute and SetMute to allow you to retrieve the current mute flag value or set it respectively. (Larry Osterman of MS, who was one of the developers who worked on the new audio support in Vista and Win7, has a great starting point article on his blog about the types of audio in the new API and when to use each of them.)
It's conceptually possible to determine at runtime which operating system you're using, and to programmatically switch between using the MMSystem functionality on XP and earlier, and the MMDevAPI functionality on Vista and higher. Expecting someone here to provide the code for doing so is a little unreasonable, however. The links I've provided should get you started on the right track, and when you run into snags along the way specific help in working through those snags would be great questions.
Related
I need to build a web based interface for a quick personal project and I'd like to use electron.
It's essentially a kind of gaming Zoom app with lots of bells and whistles.
The problem is, I need to have a main window that will run in fullscreen, which I capture with OBS and broadcast to a popular streaming service.
I also need another window, what I refer to as the Control Panel, to control elements in the main window that I work with behind-the-scenes, for showing graphics, playing sound effects, controlling video settings etc.
If I were to code this app for a web browser, I would have absolutely no problem, as I can create the secondary window from my main window (window.open) and the 2 windows can easily refer to one another and their documents.
In electron however, windows are essentially contained boxes. Communication between 2 windows has to be channelled via ipc essentially as encoded commands and interpreted by the main process...
So to control loads of elements and entities from my control panel, I'd either have to implement a complex messaging system, which frankly seems MASSIVELY unnecessary, or to be hacky I could simply issue javascript commands as strings to the other window with BrowserWindow.webContents.executeJavaScript()... but yuck.
I could also contain all the logic-y stuff in the main process, but again, this still requires a messaging system that I don't have the time to implement.
I guess I want to know if there's a better way.
I'm just imagining a scenario win which a developer has written a web-app that uses multiple windows and lots of direct window-to-window communication, and now they need to migrate it to electron... how would they best go about it without re-writing a ton of code?
Found my answer, 'nativeWindowOpen':
main_window = new electron.BrowserWindow({
webPreferences: {
nativeWindowOpen: true
}
});
I can now use window.open() from my main window and refer directly back and forth.
So now I can do this:
control_panel = window.open("./control_panel.html", "Control Panel", "width=720,height=480")
console.log(control_panel.document)
And from the opened window:
console.log(window.opener.document)
And I can refer to variables and document elements.
I couldn't find anyone mentioning this useful 'nativeWindowOpen' option when I was scouring stackoverflow et al earlier, only found it by reading documentation.
I have 3 monitors, but I don't need them all turned on all the time. I can just shut them down with power button, but I want to use their standby mode, like Windows does when we let PC idle for a while - it shuts down monitors, HDD, etc.
But of course, I wanna keep using PC and let just that monitor on standby. Others must remain on and that one doesn't wake up even with me using PC.
Is it possible to do that? It would be great to have a shortcut like Winkey+1, 2, 3 etc to shut down and wake up each monitor.
An existing app with this feature is not likely to exist, but is there a Windows API function that can control monitor state, for each monitor in a MultiMonitor system?
The display control panel applet calls SetDisplayConfig to start or stop forced projection on a particular target
You can probably use MS Detours or some other API hooking tool to inspect the usage pattern of the API while using the applet to adjust display settings.
You'll want to try Display Fusion. You should be able to do what you're asking for using Monitor configurations.
I know I'm late on this but use DDC to control your display. You can easily create hotkeys that send a command via DDC to the display to turn-off. This would be equivalent to turning off the display using the button. Works like a charm for me. The only trick is that DDC command specs vary across monitor manufacturers but its not hard to find the right codes to send with the help of google.
Ready made tools also exist for this; search for anything that is related to DDC or EDID and you should find.
Be aware though that this does not remove the display from Windows which means that apps may find their way onto displays that are off and you will be looking for them.
I have an application which has sound. I have a global property to mute the sound. The problem is, there's so many different things which can make sound, I would hate to iterate through different class types and mute/unmute their sound. Instead, I'm looking for a way to mute the sound on a global application level. I don't mean muting the entire system volume either.
One scenario: In Windows 7, you can open the Volume Mixer and adjust the volume of individual applications. While I don't intend to change this actual particular value (as I know it's Windows 7 specific), I would like to change the volume of everything in my application all at once. I would also need the ability to completely mute the sound of everything in my application. I need this ability to be compatible with Windows XP and above. I am assuming it will involve Windows API calls, but I have no idea what calls to make.
XP does not support per-application volume control. That capability was added in Vista. So what you are attempting to do cannot be done in XP by fair means.
There is software called IndieVolume that retro fits per-app volume control to XP. I can only imagine it does so by means of low-level hacking, DLL injection and so on. I doubt that's really an option for you.
What you're asking for isn't possible on XP; the OS simply does not support per-application volume levels.
You can accomplish what you want by creating a settings class that keeps things like SoundActive: Boolean or PlaySounds: Boolean or something similar. Place it in it's own unit, and have an initialization section that creates an instance of it and a finalization section that frees it (making it effectively a collection of global values).
Each unit that needs access to these settings simply uses the unit containing them, and adjusts behavior accordingly. So each of your child classes or forms or whatever would just need a check added:
if CurrentSettings.PlaySounds then
// Code that makes sounds, plays music, whatever.
The settings class can also contain methods that keep track of the current volume level (on XP, the system-wide level), and methods to increase or decrease volume using the MMSystem volume functions (there are tons of examples here and through Google of doing so). Your app can then use the OnActivate and OnDeactivate events to set the volume level when your app gains focus, and restore it to the proper volume when your app loses focus.
In Vista and higher, you can use the IAudioEndPointVolume interface I mentioned earlier and either the GetMasterVolumeLevel or SetMasterVolumeLevel methods to control system wide volume (I have an example of doing this, along with the appropriate MMDevAPI interface definitions) or device level volume (using IMMDevioce.Activate to select the proper device first and then the above IAudioEndPointVolume methods on the device interface received from IMMDevice.Activate in the ppInterface parameter).
For individual applications, you use the ISimpleAudioVolume interface, which has four methods: GetMasterVolume and SetMasterVolume, which control the volume level for your application's audio session, and GetMute and SetMute to allow you to retrieve the current mute flag value or set it respectively. (Larry Osterman of MS, who was one of the developers who worked on the new audio support in Vista and Win7, has a great starting point article on his blog about the types of audio in the new API and when to use each of them.)
It's conceptually possible to determine at runtime which operating system you're using, and to programmatically switch between using the MMSystem functionality on XP and earlier, and the MMDevAPI functionality on Vista and higher. Expecting someone here to provide the code for doing so is a little unreasonable, however. The links I've provided should get you started on the right track, and when you run into snags along the way specific help in working through those snags would be great questions.
Good afternoon all!
I'm experiencing a rather annoying issue with one of my current projects. I'm working with a hardware library (NVAPI Pascal header translation by Andreas Hausladen) in one of my current projects. This lib allows me to retrieve information from an NVIDIA GPU. I'm using it to retrieve temperatures, and with the help of Firemonkey's TAnimateFloat, i'm adjusting the angle on a custom-made dial to indicate the temperature.
As FMX defaults to Direct 2D on Windows, i can monitor the FPS with any of the various "gamer" tools out there (MSI Afterburner, FRAPS, etc).
The issue i'm having is that when i put the system into sleep mode (suspend to RAM/S3), and then start it up again, the interface on my application is blacked out (partially or completely), and nothing on the UI is visibly refreshing. I'm calling the initialization for the NVAPI library regularly and checking the result via a timer, but this doesn't fix the issue. I'm also running ProcessMessages and repaint on the parent dial and it's children controls (since i can't seem to find a repaint for the form or even an equivalent).
I tried various versions of the library, and each one presents the same issue. The next paragraph indicates that this was in fact NOT the issue, and that it's actually the renderer at fault.
I have one solution, but i want to know if there's something more... elegant, available. The solution i have involves adding FMX.Types.GlobalUseDirect2D := False; before Application.Initialize in my projects source. However, this forces FMX to use GDI+ rather than Direct2D. It works of course, but i'd like to keep D2D open as an option if i can. I can use FindCmdLineSwitch to toggle this on/off dependant on parameters, but this still requires me to restart the application to change from D2D to GDI+ or vice-versa.
What's weird about it is that the FPS counter (from FRAPS in my case) indicates that there's still activity happening in the UI (as the value changes as would be expected), but the UI itself isn't visibly refreshing.
Is this an issue related to Direct2D, or a bug with Firemonkey's implementation? More importantly, is there a better method to fixing it than disabling D2D? Lastly, also related, is it possible to "reinitialize" an application without terminating it first (so perhaps i can allow the user to switch between GDI+ and D2D without needing to restart the application)?
This is may be of the issues with FM prior to the update 4 hotfix - 26664/QC 104210
Fixes the issue of a FireMonkey HD form being unresponsive after user unlock - installing this might resolve the issue for you.
The update should be part of your registered user downloads from the EDN (direct link http://cc.embarcadero.com/item/28881).
I haven't done any coding of this kind and would like some pointers how to start. The service will eventually do several things and perhaps someone has already thought of it made it happen.
The big picture is this: Detect if a PowerPoint presentation has been updated on the server. If it has extract the slides and save them as individual jpegs then upload them to a specific image list in SharePoint. All this has to happen without human intervention.
I assume this would be a window service project, right? Then a file stream property that with some property that deals with changes in the file?
As far as dissecting a .pptx/.ppsx files and get the slides converted, it there a "api" or some dll class?
What about uploading files to a library list on SharePoint automatically?
Thanks,
Risho
I've done this in Topshelf http://topshelf-project.com/, a windows service host for .NET.
https://github.com/Topshelf/Topshelf/blob/master/src/Topshelf/FileSystem/FileSystemEventProducer.cs
Since Windows has an event pump issue if events take too long, we also implemented polling on top of this since the FileSystemWatcher gets disconnected during those times.
https://github.com/Topshelf/Topshelf/blob/master/src/Topshelf/FileSystem/PollingFileSystemEventProducer.cs
Now, these producers are supposed to be tied to actors so they might seem a bit overly complicated for just checking on file system events. It's up to use if that model is useful or just the core part. Remember that you can often receive events even if the file is locked or not done yet, so handle those exceptions.
SharePoint has what is called a timer service for just these types of situations. Andrew Connell has an article regarding creating your own timer jobs.
http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2007/01/10/5704.aspx