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[negopus]

I have tried Girder to implement global hot keys controlling Media Center while using another program, but I have found some difficulties. It is so essential to have real-time access to Media Center features, while the program natively supports most of its functions with two, three or four mouse clicks. Not a so real-time interaction, really.

I devised a combination of Win key plus Numeric Keypad keys as suitable shortcuts. But when I press a Win+Keypad key combination, Girder correctly intercepts the entire key combination, while the currently active program  intercepts the Keypad key alone (without the Win modifier), and acts accordingly. So I get a beep or, worse, unexpected behaviour. So I have to find a way to quickly discard the key combination from the buffer in Girder, preventing it to go to the currently running program too, or devise other combinations, for example Ctrl+Alt+Win+Keypad key.

Also, Girder communicates with Media Center by launching an executable, mjextman.exe (Media Jukebox Command line parameters http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/DevZone/CommandLine.html). Really slow, no real-time response. There is also a little documented opportunity to send Windows commands (signals) from another application directly to Media Center (Media Core Command List http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/DevZone/MCCommands.h). I have tried sending those signals directly from Girder with no success (I am no Girder expert). Maybe you have to send them using mjextman.exe, but the benefits of sending command directly, without loading an executable from hard disk, would be lost.

After I found those difficulties, I have stopped experimenting with Girder and Media Center. I will keep you updated when I try again.

By, the way, wouldn't it be nice to see the title of the current playing track in the title bar of the active window? Is there any plug-in that does just that?

[Mastiff]

Easy. Just use the Keyboard EX plug-in from the Girder page instead of the regular keyboard plug-in. That will block keys in certain combinations that are loaded on startup.

Also the send message commands are more then documented, there is a GML group that comes with every install of MC. You'll find it in the Media Center\Data\Extras\Girder directory.

Besides I don't think it launches that executable, I blieve that's loaded whenever MC is running. And I have never seen long delays when using that (but using messages is more "clean"), so there may be a problem in your computer.

[negopus]

Greates ever! These tools will make Media Center 400% more effective for me! What a shame they are so little documented. In particular, the KeyboardEx plug-in comes with no documentation at all.

I'll have to experiment with the tools a lot, but I think I found the right direction.

Thanks a lot, Mastiff, for showing me the light!

[negopus]

Using Girder with keyboard commands is like having a new hardware player instead of a computer program. Just a quick tap (or thump) on a key (with the Win modified pressed) and I enjoy almost real-time response to commands. Even with my eyes closed. No need for eye-hand coordination, as required with all GUI interfaces. Commands now flow from my brain directly to my hands.

In the great Girder file "C:\Programmi\J River\Media Center\Data\Extras\Girder\MC9_131.gml" the WMessage command version is far faster than the corresponding mjextman.exe command version. The mjextman.exe executable might even be cached in memory, but there is absolutely no comparison in response times. WMessage commands are really immediate. To use WMessage commands you have to enable the “Send Message” Girder plug-in, by the way. Many commands defined in http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/DevZone/MCCommands.h are not explained, nor so self-explanatory, so you have to find their meaning by trial and error.

One quirk: using mjextman.exe, commands get buffered, so if I give too many FFs or Rews, I have to wait for their completion before I can give another command. Using WMessage commands, I don’t get this annoying effect.

I still haven’t figured out how to use the undocumented KeyboardEx Girder plug-in. It is a plug-in, so it can be used in only in a mutually exclusive way respect to the “Send Message” plug-in. So, what use is filtering a keyboard event if I cannot trigger a WMessage command from it? Also, the way to set up keyboard events filtering is not clear.

[Mastiff]

Glad it helps you! To block keys you create a new command and learn it the key combinations you want to block. Then they will be interpreted by Girder, not Windows. Then you learn that key combination to the command you want to use them for. I believe it's pretty self explanatory when you create a new command for that blocking, I think there's some text there to tell you how to do it. Basically the action plug-in is only for blocking keys, learning is done the normal way (choose All and click Learn) when you have blocked those keys for Windows use.

For a full explanation look here: http://www.promixis.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4820&highlight=keyboardex

[negopus]

Thanks for the link. The key sentences are:

You will now need to create a new command somewhere in your tree. I named mine ‘OS-Blocked Keys’. With this command, go to the Plugins tab, select ‘Keyboard driver’ and click ‘Settings’.

In the dialog box that shows up (titled ‘Keyboard Action Configuration’), you'll be entering the keys that you want Girder, and only Girder, to process. We do this by making sure the ‘Learn’ button is pressed down, pressing all of the keys that we want Girder to process, and then clicking ‘OK’.

After you've done that, you need to assign an event to this ‘OS-Blocked Keys’ command. Right click this command, and select ‘On Open Girder’. These keys you have just selected will now be blocked when you open Girder. (This is one thing that had a few users baffled — the plugin doesn't immediately block these keys.)

Before you then carry on configuring your keys, you need to select ‘OS-Blocked Keys’, and press F5 to ‘Test Command’. Otherwise, the keys will still be processed by the OS.

Not quite self-explanatory… You are supposed to be aware that a single Girder event can trigger multiple commands, so when you press a keyboard combination you want to filter, it associated event goes BOTH to the default handler AND to the filtering handler. This is quite like low-level hardware programming, and I am not used to work with this low-level paradigm using a GUI interface.

I followed the instructions, but I still didn’t get it to work.

[Mastiff]

You may be right. It's probably not self-explanatory if you're not used to Girder work (which does have it's own logic at times, but once you get really into it...). Why it's not working I don't know, though. It's the same one I followed when I first took up that plug-in, and it worked. Have you rememberd to disable the regular keyboard plug-in?

[negopus]

That’s right. I had to disable the standard Keyboard plug-in. Not so self-explanatory, either.

At times, the system works pretty flawlessly, but other times, especially after some idle time, at the beginning of a key press sequence, the keyboard event (Win key + Numeric Pad key) gets to the operating systems then to the application program, without the Win key modifier. So, if I press Win+NumPad0, besides triggering the Girder event, it’s like typing a “0” in the application.