SGI Desktop Special Edition 1.1

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Text File | 1995-11-13 | 21KB | 595 lines

- 1 - 3. _C_h_a_n_g_e_s__a_n_d__A_d_d_i_t_i_o_n_s 3.1 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__2_._1 The following section describes the changes and additions since InPerson 2.0. 3.1.1 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__p_h_o_n_e +o _i_n_p_e_r_s_o_n now places and answers calls more quickly than 2.0. +o The phone's performance preference was ignored when starting an authoring call. +o The phone can now be controlled via the command-line by iiiinnnnppppccccoooonnnnttttrrrroooollll((((1111)))). 3.1.2 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__w_h_i_t_e_b_o_a_r_d +o File selection dialog boxes for Append, Import and Save As have distinct last-remembered locations. +o The whiteboard now obeys the TMPDIR environment variable when it creates temporary files. +o The whiteboard now checks before overwriting a file. If the file exists and is not writable the whiteboard gives an error better feedback as to why it couldn't write the file. +o The whiteboard now obeys the caps lock key. +o In certain cases when drawing with the freehand tool, extra lines were drawn on other participant's whiteboards. This has been fixed. +o The second font is now a fixed-width font. +o Pasting of text always was in a certain font (unchangeable). Now the text you paste always comes out in the currently set font. +o Memory usage for pages with lots of images was been improved. +o You can now import text, image and whiteboard files by dragging their desktop icons onto the whiteboard. +o Printing is now done in the background, speeding up responsiveness of the whiteboard. - 2 - 3.1.3 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__v_i_d_e_o +o The image quality of small and large video display sizes has been improved. +o When you release the hold button, the displays of other participants will be updated quickly. Before it used to take up to 15 seconds before the displays were updated. +o The vanity display will no longer be mirrored when the user selects static video. +o On Indigos with IndigoVideo, video will now return to the desired frame rate after releasing the hold button. Previously it stayed at 1 frame/sec afterwords. +o In 1.X and 2.0, video may have been transmitted while on hold. This has been fixed. +o PAL analog cameras on Galileo didn't work with HDCC small. +o A new resource 'TighSpeedVanityView: true' will update the vanity view display at the same at rate as the video capture rate. +o H.261 performance has been improved. 3.1.4 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__a_u_d_i_o +o When InPerson displays the "Do you want to exit" dialog, audio is no longer shutdown. +o Audio can be disabled with the new '*audio: false' resource. 3.1.5 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__s_h_e_l_f +o When you drop files on the shelf, it calculates the time to transfer the files to the other participants based on the current audio and video bandwidths. If the transfer time exceeds this threshold, the shelf will display a dialog box with the time and a choice to continue or cancel the transfer. The threshold is controlled via the shelf.xferTimeMsgThreshold resource described in _i_n_p_e_r_s_o_n(1). 3.1.6 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__n_e_t_w_o_r_k_i_n_g +o InPerson can be used through a network packet filter/firewall. See the descriptions for the - 3 - networkPortMin and networkPortMax resources in _i_n_p_e_r_s_o_n(1). 3.2 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__2_._0 The following section describes the changes and additions since InPerson 1.2. 3.2.1 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__p_h_o_n_e_b_o_o_k__(_P_e_o_p_l_e_P_a_g_e_s_) A new application, _p_e_o_p_l_e_p_a_g_e_s, is included in InPerson 2.0. The PeoplePages provides users with a list of all users on their corporate network that have InPerson, as well as a place to store information about people and places. A system administrator can set up the PeoplePages server on a shared system, and use NFS to provide a shared database for all users to access. See the PeoplePages man pages (mmmmaaaannnn ppppeeeeoooopppplllleeeeppppaaaaggggeeeessss) and release notes for details. 3.2.2 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__p_h_o_n_e +o InPerson now allows users to leave electronic mail messages when any participant in a call does not answer or is not running InPerson. If you have MediaMail installed and running, Inperson will use the MediaMail compose window to create the message, otherwise a simple text window is used. To use this feature, you must install the mmmmmmmmaaaaiiiillll....sssswwww....mmmmaaaaiiiillll image from the InPerson 2.0 CD. InPerson 2.0 is incompatible with the MediaMail from the IRIX 5.3 CD. +o For 2-way calls, the phones on each end of the call tell each other their network bandwidth and audio/video compression schemes. This is useful when you normally use InPerson over a LAN but occasionally call someone over ISDN. You won't have to adjust the parameters as long as the ISDN user has set their network type to ISDN in the Call Control panel under the Tools menu. +o The "Let's Make A Call" window now has a button that allows you to launch the PeoplePages. +o The Call Preferences panel is now accessible from the phone. To change preferences for all future calls, place the mouse over the phone window, and hold down the right mouse botton, then choose "Call Preferences" from the menu. You can also save your preferences from the phone, so they will be remembered next time you - 4 - launch the phone. +o When calling someone who has requested lower network bandwidth than you requested, you are now notified that audio/video quality will be lower than usual because of the reduced bandwidth. 3.2.3 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__w_h_i_t_e_b_o_a_r_d +o 3D models created with Open Inventor tools like Showcase and IRIS Annotator can be imported and shared amongst all InPerson 2.0 users. However, all the annotations are removed from the IRIS Annotator model before it is placed on the whiteboard. +o When you bring an image into the whiteboard, either using the File/Import menu bar or the snapshot tool, you are given an opportunity to scale the image to the size you desire. +o All images are now transmitted using RLE compression, for better performance over low-bandwidth networks. +o The drawing tools (square, circle, arrow, box, straight line), now each have a separate button, rather than being a pull-right menu. This UI change allows quicker access to these drawing tools. +o You can now create multiple-line text objects by hitting <CR> when typing text into the whiteboard. The entire multiple-line text object can be moved or deleted in one operation. To end a text object when typing, either click the mouse button outside the text object, or hit <Ctrl><CR>. Text pasted into the whiteboard using middle-mouse button is added as a single text object, even if it contains multiple lines of text. +o Information about which person drew which object on the whiteboard is now correctly preserved, even if people leave and rejoin the conference. Furthermore, if a whiteboard file is appended to the current whiteboard session, and it contains objects that were drawn by any of the current call participants, the "who drew what" information is correct. +o You can now cancel an image snap while the camera cursor is on by clicking either the middle mouse or right mouse button. - 5 - +o Double-clicking on a page tab forces all participants in the conference to that page. +o The InPerson 2.0 whiteboard fully interoperates with InPerson 1.1. If an InPerson 1.1 user starts the conference, the InPerson 2.0 whiteboard reverts to 1.1 behavior: no 3D models and single line text objects. If an InPerson 2.0 user starts the conference, but an InPerson 1.1 user is invited, the 1.1 user will not see 3D objects on their whiteboard, and multi-line text objects will be displayed in a single line. +o Resources to specify the fonts are no longer used. You can specify which of the predefined fonts is used by default. The predefined fonts are: 0: Helvetica-Bold-18 1: Helvetica-14 2: Helvetica-BoldOblique-18 3: Helvetica-Bold-24 +o Whiteboard files can now be printed from the desktop just by dragging the whiteboard file icon onto a printer icon. +o Thick freehand lines are now much cleaner-looking. 3.2.4 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__C_a_l_l__V_i_e_w +o The InPerson Call view now has Network Information panel that shows conference congestion state, actual transmitted bandwidth and video frame rate, and actual audio/video compression algorithms being used. +o If you invite more participants to a 2-way call, but your network does not support IP multicast, a warning dialog is displayed that indicates audio/video for multiway calls cannot be sent and received correctly without IP multicast support. +o When starting up a call in authoring mode, InPerson now automatically puts the call on hold, to avoid wasting CPU resources to compress audio and video. When you invite someone into an authoring call, take yourself off hold so that the other user can see and hear you. 3.2.5 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__v_i_d_e_o - 6 - +o Two additional video compression algorithms are available: +o ITU-T's H.261 low-bandwidth compression algorithm for ISDN and other low-bandwidth networks +o 8-bit RGB uncompressed for high-quality images on high-speed networks such as FDDI or ATM. Both new video compression algorithms are implemented in software and do not require the InPerson Option board. +o The Call Control Panel, which controls various parameters of an InPerson call, has changed substantially. In previous releases, InPerson provided independent controls for bandwidth, video frame rate and video resolution, even though these three parameters are related. Thus, users could specify a combination of settings that was impossible to achieve: for example, large video, 20 frames/sec, but only 128 kbps of bandwidth. In such cases, InPerson had to drastically reduce the transmitted video frame rate below the user's setting in order to meet the bandwidth goal. In the new control panel, users specify one major control: the network bandwidth goal for this call. Based on this bandwidth setting, InPerson will then make the best choice for video resolution, video compression algorithm, video frame rate, and audio compression algorithm. Sophisticated users can find out what choices InPerson is making, and even change InPerson's default behavior. Specific changes in the Call Control Panel include: +o You can now switch between static and live video during an active call. +o Support for medium-size video (208x156) has been removed, since H.261 does not support this size, and zooming between small/medium and medium/large was always impractical because the resolutions are not integer multiples of each other. +o You can now specify the total amount of network bandwidth to use in a call. There are 4 preset bandwidth settings: ISDN, T1, LAN and high-speed LAN. There is also a finer control feature to let - 7 - sophisticated users choose an exact bandwidth. Based on the bandwidth setting for a call, InPerson will will choose the appropriate video capture resolution, video compression algorithm, video frame rate, and audio compression algorithm. To see the compression algorithms and video resolution InPerson is using, click on the finer control button in the Call Control Panel. The graphs at the bottom of the control panel provide a qualitative comparison of the various compression algorithms. +o The Video Size control now controls only the amount of screen real estate allocated to the video displays; in other words, it controls the ddddiiiissssppppllllaaaayyyy rrrreeeessssoooolllluuuuttttiiiioooonnnn of the video, but not the ccccaaaappppttttuuuurrrreeeedddd aaaannnndddd ttttrrrraaaannnnssssmmmmiiiitttttttteeeedddd rrrreeeessssoooolllluuuuttttiiiioooonnnn. The resolution of video captured, compressed and transmitted depends on the call bandwidth setting, as mentioned above, and on the Performance control (explained below). Video is zoomed or decimated in order to convert between the resolution of video being received and the requested video display size. +o The frame rate control has been replaced by a single "Performance" control: whether maintaining frame rate or maintaining video image quality is most important. InPerson will send the highest frame rate possible given the bandwidth setting, and user's choice of image quality vs. frame rate. The setting of this "Performance" control now controls the resolution of the image transmitted over the network. The "Optimize frame rate" setting causes small images to be transmitted. The "Optimize quality" setting causes large images to be transmitted, except when transmitting H.261 images, which are always transmitted as small images. +o The meters indicating actual frame rate, network bandwidth and congestion control state have been moved into a separate control panel, called the Network Info panel. Also, this panel shows the current audio and video compression algorithms being used. The Call Preferences panel shows the compression algorithms normally chosen for the chosen bandwidth setting; however, different algorithms may temporarily be used if congestion control has forced InPerson to drastically lower - 8 - it's transmitted bandwidth. +o The congestion control algorithm may now change the transmitted video resolution and compression algorithm, if congestion indicates that a drastic change in network bandwidth is appropriate. Minor changes in network bandwidth are accomplished by automatically changing video frame rate, as in previous releases. However, because each video stream is now displayed at a consistent size on each users window, regardless of the received video resolution, these changes in transmitted video resolution are not obvious or annoying to the user. +o InPerson will now send uncompressed video at up to 30 fps, when operating on networks with a large network MTU (maximum transmission unit). To enable this 30 fps feature, you must add the following lines to your ~/.desktop-<hostname>/InPerson file: ****nnnneeeettttwwwwoooorrrrkkkkMMMMTTTTUUUU:::: 4444333355552222 3.2.6 _I_n_P_e_r_s_o_n__a_u_d_i_o +o InPerson 2.0 supports the InPerson Option Board for Indy, which provides G.728 audio compression and acoustic echo cancellation. The echo cancellation feature will always be enabled for each user that has the board, even if other users in the call don't have it. The G.728 audio compression can only be used in 2- way calls where both users have the board. +o InPerson no longer changes the audio output sampling rate when a call starts. Instead, it will automatically perform rate conversion from the sampling rate used by the current audio compression algorithm (8 or 16 kHz) to the current audio output sampling rate set for the system. This new feature means that if you're using your audio system when an InPerson call comes in (for example, playing CDs with CDman), InPerson will not disrupt the audio being played. However, audio does sound slightly better if no sample rate conversion is being performed. For optimal audio quality when you are not using your audio subsystem for anything besides InPerson, use apanel(1) to set the audio output rate to be equal to the audio input rate. Or, if you want InPerson to always set the output rate equal to the input rate when a call starts (and thus never do sample rate conversion, but potentially - 9 - disrupt other audio applications), add the following line to your ~/.desktop-<hostname>/InPerson file: ****aaaauuuuddddiiiiooooAAAAuuuuttttooooRRRRaaaatttteeeeCCCCoooonnnnvvvveeeerrrrssssiiiioooonnnn:::: FFFFaaaallllsssseeee +o The resource audioInputLevel has been replaced by audioLeftAtten and audioRightAtten. These new resources are automatically updated your ~/.desktop- <hostname>/InPerson file when inpview exits. The audioInputSource resource is also updated to the current _a_p_a_n_e_l(1) value when inpview exits, too. +o InPerson will now automatically change audio compression algorithms in response to extreme network congestion.