- Updated the services API so that it links up with an output and
the output gets data from that service rather than via settings.
This allows the service context to have control over how an output is
used, and makes it so that the URL/key/etc isn't necessarily some
static setting.
Also, if the service is attached to an output, it will stick around
until the output is destroyed.
- The settings interface has been updated so that it can allow the
usage of service plugins. What this means is that now you can create
a service plugin that can control aspects of the stream, and it
allows each service to create their own user interface if they create
a service plugin module.
- Testing out saving of current service information. Saves/loads from
JSON in to obs_data_t, seems to be working quite nicely, and the
service object information is saved/preserved on exit, and loaded
again on startup.
- I agonized over the settings user interface for days, and eventually
I just decided that the only way that users weren't going to be
fumbling over options was to split up the settings in to simple/basic
output, pre-configured, and then advanced for advanced use (such as
multiple outputs or services, which I'll implement later).
This was particularly painful to really design right, I wanted more
features and wanted to include everything in one interface but
ultimately just realized from experience that users are just not
technically knowledgable about it and will end up fumbling with the
settings rather than getting things done.
Basically, what this means is that casual users only have to enter in
about 3 things to configure their stream: Stream key, audio bitrate,
and video bitrate. I am really happy with this interface for those
types of users, but it definitely won't be sufficient for advanced
usage or for custom outputs, so that stuff will have to be separated.
- Improved the JSON usage for the 'common streaming services' context,
I realized that JSON arrays are there to ensure sorting, while
forgetting that general items are optimized for hashing. So
basically I'm just using arrays now to sort items in it.
--------------------------------------------------
Notes and details
--------------------------------------------------
Why was this done? Because wxWidgets was just lacking in many areas. I
know wxWidgets is designed to be used with native controls, and that's
great, but wxWidgets just is not a feature-complete toolkit for
multiplatform applications. It lacks in dialog editors, its code is
archaic and outdated, and I just feel frustrated every time I try to do
things with it.
Qt on the other hand.. I had to actually try Qt to realize how much
better it was as a toolkit. They've got everything from dialog editors,
to an IDE, a debugger, build tools, just everything, and it's all
top-notch and highly maintained. The focus of the toolkit is
application development, and they spend their time trying to help
people do exactly that: make programs. Great support, great tools,
and because of that, great toolkit. I just didn't want to alienate any
developers by being stubborn about native widgets.
There *are* some things that are rather lackluster about it and design
choices I disagree with though. For example, I realize that to have an
easy to use toolkit you have to have some level of code generation.
However, in my personal and humble opinion, moc just feels like a
terrible way to approach the problem. Even now I feel like there are a
variety of ways you could handle code generation and automatic
management of things like that. I don't like the idea of circumventing
the language itself like that. It feels like one giant massive hack.
--------------------------------------------------
Things that aren't working properly:
--------------------------------------------------
- Settings dialog is not implemented. The dialog is complete but the
code to handle the dialog hasn't been constructed yet.
- There is a problem with using Qt widgets as a device target on
windows, with at least OpenGL: if I have the preview widget
automatically resize itself, it seems to cause some sort of video
card failure that I don't understand.
- Because of the above, resizing the preview widget has been disabled
until I can figure out what's going on, so it's currently only a
32x32 area.
- Direct3D doesn't seem to render correctly either, seems that the
viewport is messed up or something. I'm sort of confused about
what's going on with it.
- The new main window seems to be triggering more race conditions than
the wxWidgets main window dialog did. I'm not entirely sure what's
going on here, but this may just be existing race conditions within
libobs itself that I just never spotted before (even though I tend to
be very thorough with race conditions any time I use variables
cross-thread)
jp9000