README of the plasma application for conference screens ======================================================== This application was originally devised by Stuart "Aq" Langridge for LUGRadio Live in 2006. However, the original version was written in PHP. Barbie rewrote this version in Perl for YAPC::Europe::2006. Instructions ------------ 1) Register Domain and Create DNS entries Create your domain for accessing the site. For the examples below we will assume this to be 'plasma.example.com'. Set up your DNS entries to point to the correct server IP address. 2) Install Directories and Files Untar this tarball and copy all the files under the ./cgi-bin and ./html directories into your directory structure where you will be serving your web pages from. In the examples below we will assume this is /var/www/plasma. 3) Install Perl Libraries A version of Perl will need to be installed. The application has been tested with version 5.6.1, 5.8.0, 5.8.4 and 5.8.7, but should work with all recent releases. If you don't already have them, you will need to install the following Perl libraries from CPAN: CGI Image::Size File::Find::Rule If you are unfamiliar with installing from CPAN, you will need to run the CPAN shell from the command line as follows: $> cpan cpan> install CGI cpan> install Image::Size cpan> install File::Find::Rule cpan> quit $> After each install command above you will see messages display for each stage of the installation process. If there are any failures, you may need to consult the appropriate documentation or use an alternative install method (e.g. from a package repository). Note that you will need to have root or administrator access on the machine you are installing these libraries. If you have sudo access, type 'sudo cpan' as the first command. If you are running Windows, you may install all of the above via the PPM application. Simply type 'ppm' from a command line window. 4) Setup Web Server Set up your web server to serve pages from the ./html directory and Perl scripts (.pl) from the ./cgi-bin. Below is how this would look in Apache: ServerName plasma.example.com ServerAdmin admin@example.com DocumentRoot /var/www/plasma/html ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/plasma/cgi-bin/ Options +ExecCGI ErrorLog /var/www/logs/plasma-error.log CustomLog /var/www/logs/plasma-access.log common 5) Edit Schedule Inside the ./cgi-bin/schedule.pl, we include the full schedule for the event. This is listed in the DATA section at the end of the application. The format for each entry is: START | END | ROOM | SPEAKER | TITLE | ABSTRACT These not be in any particular order, as the application will order these appropriately when it loads them. The start and end date/time is of the format YYYYMMDDhhmmss Include morning, lunch and afternoon breaks, BOFs clean up time, etc using the examples included. 6) Edit Marquee The marquee scrolling text is held with the ./cgi-bin/marquee.pl application in the DATA section. Edit contents as appropriate. Note that each line of the marquee will be separated by a single whitespace in the actual display. The top line of the marquee frame is the event name. Edit the '$EVENT_STR' as required. 7) Edit Photos The photos that will appear in the right hand panel of the display are all taken from the directory ./html/photos/dailies. Drop files into this directory and they will be included in the next refresh. The current refresh is set at 10 minute intervals, if you wish to change this see the tag in the ./cgi-bin/photos.pl application. 8) Logos, Images & Colours In addition to the dynamic side of the application, there are a number of images used to support the layout. You may need to change these to suit your needs, although it is recommended you use the same names, otherwise you'll need to ammend the .pl files. Images used are: ./html/images/marquee-bg.jpg - background image for the marquee frame ./html/images/schedule-bg.jpg - background image for the schedule frame ./html/images/logo.jpg - your logo for the schedule frame ./html/images/tvstatic.gif - the interference image used between photos It is recommended you keep the logo image at roughly 100 x 100 pixels. Main colours are assumed to be white text on a black background. Suitable colours for the time display in the bottom of the schedule frame, can be amended through the use of the '$COLOUR_INNER' and '$COLOUR_OUTER' variables, where the inner is the background colour of the display block and the outer is the border colour. 9) Run It! Restart Apache, if you haven't already done so, and point your browser at your plasma domain, and the pages should load. You may need to tweak image files and text to suit your application, but that is essentially it. Have fun. Copyright 2006 Stuart Langridge (PHP version). Copyright 2006-2007 Barbie for Miss Barbell Productions.