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Choosing the Glass interface
The Glass interface is a choice, never a default: the kiosk stays the player's interface until the screen is handed to glass-evo, and comes back when it is given back. Its first full release is 0.2.0 with Glass 0.9.0: verified on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a DSI screen and the Touch Display plugin, and on an x86 player; other screens are untried.
Three things are chosen, each by itself, all in the Glass Manager (http://<player>.local:5582/):
| What | Where | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Getting glass-evo | System tab | Nothing on the screen: the component is on the player. |
| Handing the screen over | Screen tab | The player's own screen: the kiosk, or glass-evo. |
| The Face tab and Anymote show | Screen tab | The browser views: the theme alone, or the theme with the face over it. |
In the Glass Manager, on the System tab, under Glass's own release (Glass 0.8.0 or later): Get glass-evo. The release is downloaded from GitHub, checked against its checksum, and installed; nothing changes on the screen. The same panel updates it, goes back to the version before, and removes it. Remove is refused while glass-evo owns the screen: give the screen back to the kiosk first, on the Screen tab. Face themes of your own and your adjustments stay when it is removed.
Glass and glass-evo each name the least of the other they work with, and the Manager keeps to it: a glass-evo that needs a later Glass is not installed, and an upgrade of Glass that needs a later glass-evo installs that first. Glass 0.8.24 works with glass-evo 0.1.13 or later. The same tab's Offer test releases covers glass-evo's test releases as it does Glass's.
On the Screen tab:
-
Use glass-evo on the screen hands the screen over. The plugins that bring a kiosk, where they are installed and on (Now Playing, Touch Display, Display Configuration), are turned off through the player's own plugin manager, then the kiosk's unit and the console on the first terminal (
volumio-kiosk,getty@tty1), and every change is recorded with what it was before. - Give the screen back to the kiosk restores exactly what the take changed, in reverse order, and only where it is still as the take left it.
From Glass 0.8.37 the Manager asks first whether the player's graphics can draw on the screen itself, where glass-evo would: the display tries the steps without drawing, while the kiosk still has the screen. Where they cannot, nothing is turned off, and the tab says what was found and offers Try glass-evo on the screen anyway.
Each asks once before it goes. The tab lists what the take turned off, and the status sheet's Screen section names the owner and what the last take changed.
- On a Raspberry Pi glass-evo draws on the screen itself. No X server runs and no browser: the memory they took is free.
- On x86 the picture may reach the screen through an X server alone, the graphics card having no kernel driver. There the kiosk and its browser are stopped and a plain X server is brought up in their place, with glass-evo as its only client. Giving the screen back stops it before the kiosk starts its own.
- Where there is nothing to draw on, neither a screen the kernel drives nor an X server, the Screen tab says so and the take is not offered.
- While music plays: the theme and its meters, and nothing over them. A touch brings the bar of controls (previous, play or pause, next, volume down and up, More); it leaves by itself six seconds after the last touch, or at a touch beside it. More opens a sheet with repeat, random and mute.
- While the player stands still: the theme standing still, with the clock and the date over it where they are switched on, and the bar under them, which stays.
A touch on the bar or its sheet is the face's alone. A touch on the picture brings the bar or sends it away, and reaches the theme as well, so a theme's own controls act as they do without the face. The screen is never empty and never shows the console.
While glass-evo owns the screen the kiosk is off, so glass-evo is the player's only interface on it. Where it cannot be, the kiosk must: the screen goes back without being asked when glass-evo failed to start three times in a row, when its component is gone, or when Glass is turned off or removed. Three failed starts take about ten seconds from Glass 0.8.27 (before, three times the screensaver's delay, with the screen black meanwhile), and from Glass 0.8.28 the reason names what would not load where it is a graphics library. An upgrade of Glass keeps the screen. The Screen tab says why it went back.
The way back is always in the Manager, from any browser on the network: http://<player>.local:5582/, the Screen tab.
The Glass Manager's Face tab and Anymote (http://<player>.local:5582/anymote) are Glass's picture in a browser: the theme the player has on show, with its meters. They are not a copy of the player's screen: what a kiosk shows there, Volumio's interface or the Now Playing plugin's screen, never appears in them.
From glass-evo 0.1.14 with Glass 0.8.10 the component carries the face for a browser as well, one module the Manager serves to both pages, and the Manager's Screen tab has a setting for it, The Face tab and Anymote show. It decides one thing: whether glass-evo's clock, date and bar of controls are drawn over the theme in those pages.
| Choice | While glass-evo owns the player's screen | While the kiosk owns it |
|---|---|---|
| the Glass interface while glass-evo holds the player's screen (as it comes) | the theme with the face over it | the theme alone |
| the Glass interface, always | the theme with the face over it | the theme with the face over it |
| the theme alone | the theme alone | the theme alone |
- the Glass interface while glass-evo holds the player's screen (before Glass 0.8.36 it read "what the player's screen shows") follows the owner of the player's screen. Once the screen is handed to glass-evo, the pages carry the face as the screen does. While the kiosk owns the screen, Glass's display there is the theme with no face, so the pages show the theme alone. On a player whose screen stays with the kiosk this choice and "the theme alone" show the same thing; they differ from the moment the screen is handed to glass-evo.
- the Glass interface, always puts the face in the browser whoever owns the player's screen. A phone or a tablet on Anymote is then a Glass interface by itself, with the player's own screen left to the kiosk.
- the theme alone keeps the face out of the browser, also while glass-evo owns the player's screen.
The line under the choice says which of the two the pages carry now. An open page follows a change of the choice at once, and a change of the screen's owner within a few seconds. The row is shown where a glass-evo of 0.1.14 or later is installed; without one the pages show the theme alone. It does not depend on the player's own screen: a player whose screen glass-evo cannot hold still has the choice.
The face in a page is the face on the screen, the same code compiled for the browser: the look, the sizes, the clock's and the date's patterns are the player's, and a touch on a button acts on the player. The clock tells the time of the device the browser runs on.
See also The-Screen, Face-Themes and On-a-Remote-Display.