LiveText 2 and ToasterScripts

[ZachSchuster]

Before I begin, I will admit tht I have never done anything with ToasterScripts, save what Kris Gurrard was kind enough to explain to me via E-Mail.

Let me give some background. My school is developing an application for managing sports graphics. The idea is that this application will hold all the text and image paths, publish it to datalink .txt files, and also push them to live ouput. LiveText is essentially running in the background, and I would only need to interact with LiveText on a limited basis.

LiveText 2 will allow you to send a page to LIVE by means of Datalink. However, there is no command to send a page to the edit screen. I would like to do this for the purpose of "previewing" a page before sending it to LIVE.

Thanks to Kris, I know how to create a shortcut key to send a page to edit/preview, but the shortcut key command must be "hardwired" to a page number. In other words, I would need 5 shortcuts for 5 pages, 10 shortcuts for 10 pages, etc...

So I have three questions:

1. Is there a way to make the page value a variable?

2. If yes, and my internal application can write a number to a text file (ie. preview.txt is a single line file with "15"), is there a way that every time I hit my shortcut key, the script will see that it is a variable, and the variable is found at c:\stuff\preview.txt. In this case, I hit the shortcut key and page 15 will load in the edit window.

And lastly:

3. Is there a way to add command lines to Datalink via ToasterScript? A Datalink command like "setpagenum" would be ideal. That would be the easiest way, since that way I would not need to access LiveText to activate the shortcut keystroke. With how new LT2 is, I suspect the community at large does not know if this is possible.

Thanks!

[animlab]

ToasterScript itself did not have the ability to accept inputs (keyboard type in, file...) and assign value to a variable. Req_Buttons() is the only way to interface to user with 4(5) selection buttons only.

However, if you can write program in any language, you can use the RemoteCG program I wrote in thread http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthre...ferrerid=20692 to communicate with CGDesigner. Similiar program can be done for LT2. That is the simplest way to match your needs that come to my mind first.
Check my web site. http://www.animlab.com. Choose English, then NewTek Addons / ToasterScripts / VT:RemoteCG_cmd.

If you can write program in c++, then you can write your own remote program to control LT2 in the way you like with all ToasterScript commands.

As the item 3 you talked about, the answer is yes and no. NewTek did not release a SDK for LT. If that SDK exists, it might have chances to add commands you want. IMHO, if can do the C++ programming, you can skip Datalink and remote LT2 directly.

[ZachSchuster]

Chen,

Thanks for your insight on this. I may be contacting you in the future for some clarification on this.

Thanks again!

[animlab]

RemoteLT is on my web site now. You can find it under the "NewTek Addons" tab. Click on "LiveText" menu on the left.

[ZachSchuster]

Awesome!

Thank you!