The conventional mechanism to enter an access grid room with the
VenueClient tool is to enter the venue's Lobby, then navigate to the
desired room via some path. That path is either known beforehand or is
easy to determine e.g. educational institution rooms tend to be
accessed via an "Educational Lobby". Alternatively, the room may be in
the VenueClient's hot list (the "My Venues" menu).
Finding a room by navigation can be quite tedious, especially if the
room is several steps away from the main Lobby. This is probably one of
the
reasons that most servers' room layouts are quite shallow. What if you
don't know where the room is within the server? Then you're stuck with
going back and forward through various lobbies till you find the right
room. The upcoming AG3 promises to be much faster moving between rooms.
In the meantime, we'd like a faster method of room navigation.
ServerInfo is an AG SharedApplication which allows a user to download
the layouts of different servers. This server layout information is
then made available through a new selection menu in the VenueClient.
The snapshot on the left shows the "Extra" menu with a list of known
servers. The snapshot on the right shows how the menu cascades as the
cursor moves over the list of servers to show the rooms available at
each server (in this case the server V1).
When a room is selected, the VenueClient navigates directly to that
room, bypassing any intervening lobbies and rooms which would otherwise
have to be traversed.
Downloads
These downloads are platform neutral and have been tested with
Linux, OSX and WindowsXP versions of the AG2.3 toolkit.
Modified versions of VenueClientController.py
and VenueClientUI.py implement the new
"Extra" menu. ServerInfo.agpkg is the shared
application which enables serving or downloading the room layout
information used by the new "Extra" menu.
Method
Instructions for the impatient:
Replace existing versions of VenueClientController.py and
VenueClientUI.py with the new downloaded versions. You may first want
to make copies of the original versions somewhere.
Install the ServerInfo.agpkg shared application package.
Navigate (normally) to a venue which has venue server
information available. Try
https://vv2.ap-accessgrid.org:8000/Venues/default, then go via the
Service Lobby to the "Server Info" room.
Join the existing Venue Server Info session (under
Application Sessions) and use it to download the available server
information
Restart the VenueClient and browse the servers in your new
"Extra" menu
Main instructions:
Replace existing versions of VenueClientController.py and
VenueClientUI.py with the new downloaded versions. You may first want
to make copies of the original versions somewhere. The location of the
originals depends on the OS being used. Typically it is:
Install the ServerInfo.agpkg shared application package.
From the command line, run the command: agpm.py -p ServerInfo.agpkg or, for
a system wide installation (so all users can use it), run: agpm.py -s -p ServerInfo.py.
For OSX users, first run: .
/Applications/AccessGridToolkit.app/Contents/Resources/setupenv.sh
(note the dot, then space, at the beginning of the command). Now run
either:
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python
/Applications/AccessGridToolkit.app/Contents/Resources/bin/agpm.py -p
ServerInfo.agpkg OR:
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python
/Applications/AccessGridToolkit.app/Contents/Resources/bin/agpm.py -s
-p ServerInfo.agpkg (for a system wide installation)
It is important that OSX users do NOT double click on a
ServerInfo.agpkg file in some room's Data area to install the package.
Although the package will appear to install OK, it will NOT run
properly. This is a feature of the AG2.3 toolkit for OSX.
Navigate to a venue which has venue server
information available. Try
https://vv2.ap-accessgrid.org:8000/Venues/default, then go via the
Service Lobby to the "Venue Server Info" room. Join the
existing Venue Server Info session by first selecting it (under
Application Sessions), followed by a right mouse click and selecting
the Open option. A popup
window will show the servers you already have information about
(probably none at this stage) in the left side column and server
information which is available in the right side column. Right-click in
the right side column and select "Install venue server info" from the
resulting popup menu. A successful download of the server information
is indicated by a message dialogue, informing you that it has
"downloaded data OK".
The VenueClient needs to be restarted to become aware of
the newly downloaded server information. From then on, the new "Extra"
menu will show a list of known servers, selecting any one of which will
result in a further cascading menu list of rooms at that server.
Selecting any of these rooms will cause the VenueClient to directly
enter that room.
Notes:
server layouts change sometimes as rooms are removed or
added. Regular downloading of server information will keep your menus
up to date
the downloaded information is stored as a number of
*.agsvr files in the user's .AccessGrid/Config directory, one such file
for each server. Thus, information about the Asia-Pacific Access Grid
server is held in the file ~/.AccessGrid/Config/apag.agsvr
