BBC Schedula: Difference between revisions
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True to his word, Alan, produced the ammended program for the BBC. First trial, did not go successful at first, until Alan advised to lift the front edge up of the BBC up a couple of centimetres and then drop it. After which, much to Owain's delight - it worked - the new system proved popular and was used during 1995-96, running on an old 286 with no harddisc. | True to his word, Alan, produced the ammended program for the BBC. First trial, did not go successful at first, until Alan advised to lift the front edge up of the BBC up a couple of centimetres and then drop it. After which, much to Owain's delight - it worked - the new system proved popular and was used during 1995-96, running on an old 286 with no harddisc. | ||
In a split role, the DOS code also included a simple driver for [[Tank | In a split role, the DOS code also included a simple driver for [[Tank Umatic]] which had been modified to include a set of wires in parallel with the front panel play/rewind/stop buttons, in principle allowing tapes to be scheduled out of hours. However, this was never seen to be working and support was later removed, leaving all hardware in control of the BBC Micro. | ||
At the start of 1996-97, Owain attempted a further feat with the PC user interface. He had experimented with an extremely crude VGA to composite converter from Bull Electrical, that somehow seemed to work. His aim was to get the scheduler to announce the start of a program and show schedules by putting it's VGA output to network and showing some graphics. It was trialed before it was ready, and the system would get itself into a very confused state. | At the start of 1996-97, Owain attempted a further feat with the PC user interface. He had experimented with an extremely crude VGA to composite converter from Bull Electrical, that somehow seemed to work. His aim was to get the scheduler to announce the start of a program and show schedules by putting it's VGA output to network and showing some graphics. It was trialed before it was ready, and the system would get itself into a very confused state. | ||
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The remaining changes to the BBC Micro versions were primarily incremental changes, such as renaming the startup commands, and timestamping the cryptic columns of numbers which scrolled past when the video was not otherwise being used for teletext or automatic schedules. From version 2.86 the [[Station Video Mux]] was used for video output instead, and the test cards gained a 1kHz audio tone. | The remaining changes to the BBC Micro versions were primarily incremental changes, such as renaming the startup commands, and timestamping the cryptic columns of numbers which scrolled past when the video was not otherwise being used for teletext or automatic schedules. From version 2.86 the [[Station Video Mux]] was used for video output instead, and the test cards gained a 1kHz audio tone. | ||
In parallel with the BBC Micro changes the DOS front end was also adjusted, partly to track new functionality and partly to enhance it in itself. A total of 27 versions were produced from 1998 to 2004. | |||
A handful of new keyboard shortcuts were added, notably using INSERT and DELETE on the keyboard for inserting and deleting programmes (rather than the obtuse I and D in Owain's version), and shortcuts to bring forward a programme ahead of schedule if required. | |||
[[Image:ConsoleDayView.png|left|thumb|160px|Page per day listings]] | |||
From January 2000, after a suggestion by [[Alex Hudson]], a new 'page per day' interface was added rather than the schedule being one continuous listing. A priority column was also introduced so that the original of the schedule could be recorded, whether it was a telephone request, template entry, manually entered, etc... | |||
The ever increasing number of satellite channels, in addition to the 40 teletext magazines available, made searching the channel selection somewhat tedious. The channel selector was therefore changed to allow just the first few letters to be typed to narrow down the listing. | |||
To save time for the [[Scheduling Manager]] the concept of schedule templates was introduced, infact this was just a CSV file saved from Excel with recurring programmes. With careful design a quite respectable number of programmes could fill the schedule with little or no human intervention. | |||
The code by this point could also be compiled to generate a version to run on an Acorn Archimedes, indeed this is where the development was done, and the DOS version which was actually used by the station only produced as a byproduct. | |||
==BBC Micro and PHP system== | ==BBC Micro and PHP system== | ||