This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR).

Written by:                  Jan Rieger <jan@ricomp.de>

Project's homepage:          http://RiComp.de/vdr

Latest version available at: http://RiComp.de/vdr

See the file COPYING for license information.
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Description:
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Your  TV  screen  and a keyboard  that  are  connected to a VDR box  are
building a terminal. With this terminal you can manage several consoles.
In the OSD  of VDR you can  open as many  consoles as you want. In  each
console you can start a program that runs in the background. Your inputs
to the keyboard are  redirected to the current  selected console as well
as the output that these  programs generate are redirected into the OSD.

With this setup you can look after some things that you want to know but
have no entry in the commands.conf file for that without the necessarity
to connect a  monitor to  your box or  make a network connection from an
other computer with telnet or ssh.
Also you can  run longer tasks such as  converting a movie and you won't
VDR to shutdown itself until the conversion is completed.



Operation Manual
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To use the  console plugin you have to  compile the plugin and start VDR
with the "-Pconsole" switch as you needed to do with every other plugin.

Once  the plugin is  installed  you can see  the entry 'Consoles' in the
main  menu of  VDR. By  activating this entry  with the key OK you get a
list of all actually opened consoles.  In the first time  after starting
VDR this list  should be empty.  You can  create a new console  with the
red key.  By doing this the new  console is also  opened for you and you
can begin to work immediately.

In  the  console  window:  With the  left and  right keys  of the remote
control you can  leaf through the  (at that moment not visible)  console
list. With the blue key you can "Terminate"  the process after a confir-
mation if you  really want to do so;  Or if it already  has quitted then
you  can "Close" the console.  In each case  the current console  window
will be closed and you get back  to the console list  in wich the closed
console is gone.

Back to the console list:  Some of the consoles in the list are running,
others  are quitted.  The  quitted  ones are  shown  with  the  appendix
"stopped".  Stopped consoles  are shown until you close them explicitly,
so you can  look for the  output of longer  running tasks without having
to watch them.  The blue key has here the same meaning  as in an console
window.

If you use your  keyboard both as  remote control  and as keyboard for a
console then  you have  to note  that a  console  window  for a  running
process captures the keyboard  for console  input automatically. In this
mode you can not control VDR with the usual keys. To leave this mode you
have to quit  the process or you can  press the {ESC} key twice within a
second.  If you have not pressed {ESC}  a second time  then the original
{ESC} key will be  sent to the console.  If you press another  key after
the first  {ESC} key then  this combination  will be sent at once to the
console.  Another option to switch the  keyboard caption mode on and off
would be to press the yellow key.
During the time  the keyboard caption mode  is off a  keyboard symbol on
the right side in the first row blinks to signalize this state.

Miscellaneous:
If a process creates the bell signal then you can hear the sound at once
and a bell symbol blinks in the first row of the console window.  If you
don't have the  corresponding console open then  it will be shown in the
console list. As soon as you have seen a signal, that signal disappears.


Final
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And now have much fun with this plugin :-)

