v1.13beta Tue Mar 30 09:26:03 PST 1993 - Lots of internal changes to make things work on an SGI (almost all having to do with the totally braindead AT&T C++ compiler & a few having to do with SGI's stupidly basing their system on AT&T's System-V abortion rather than real Unix). v1.12beta Sun Mar 7 21:51:09 PST 1993 - Added 'edit' button to let you modify a session you previously created. - A few internal changes to make things work on a DEC-3000/5000. v1.11beta Mon Mar 1 01:42:02 PST 1993 - ivs 2.1 fix was incomplete: also needed to change multicast address flag from -i to -I. (quick fix thanks to Thierry Turletti.) v1.9,10beta Sun Feb 28 22:45:10 PST 1993 - Fix a lot of stuff on 'new session' window. It's no longer necessary to type carriage returns anywhere (they do no harm if you do type them). Clicking in the 'other' scope typein box now automatically selects 'Other'. The 'create' button is always enabled but if you click on it when there is incomplete or inconsistent information to create a session, the window beeps & puts the cursor at the field that needs input. - Allowed user to augment/change the media menus by setting sd_menu(media) variables in .sd.tcl. - removed the "source ~/.sd.tcl" from sd_start.tcl -- too many people tried to use sd_start.tcl as their .sd.tcl & the infinite recusion killed sd. - changed wb default from "ignore" (-w) to "accept" (+w). - Added timezone to session start/stop information to try to emphasize that times are given in *local* time. (suggested by Steve Deering & Pavel Curtis.) - Fixed ivs startup to be compatible with ivs v2.1 (ttl flag changed from "-t" to "-T"). (problem pointed out by Thierry Turletti.) - Made video default to nv rather than ivs. (suggested by several people.) v1.8beta Wed Dec 2 02:08:14 PST 1992 Fixed stupid bug where I was deleting locally created sessions after the hold time because sd never heard an advertisement (it should never hear someone else advertising locally created sessions!). Fixed an Interviews scrolling bug that caused Steve Deering's sd to coredump. v1.7beta Tue Dec 1 09:53:46 PST 1992 Fixed TCL library to do a fork correctly (you'd think they would have figured this out by now...) v1.6beta Tue Dec 1 07:09:14 PST 1992 First "real" release. Major changes (details below): - sessions are now created with a lifetime and are deleted at the end of their life or if no announcement is heard for 2 hours. - caching has been implemented - session startup is user programmable (via TCL scripts). - there is a 'delete' button to delete sessions. - the session list window is kept sorted. - "nv" is started with a "-ttl" argument. Details: 'Lifetime' can (must) now be specified when creating a new session (lifetime defaults to two hours starting "now"). Every 30 minutes, sd scans all the sessions it knows about and deletes any that have expired. (The 30 minute time can be changed by setting the X resource "sd.ScanTime" to the number of minutes between scans.) In addition to purging expired sessions, sd will delete any sessions that it hasn't heard advertised for two hours. (This interval can be changed by setting the X resource "sd.HoldTime" to the number of minutes to hold onto unadvertised sessions. If you set sd.HoldTime to 0, unadvertised sessions will be kept until they expire or are manually deleted.) Since there is now a lifetime to make obsolete sessions go away, caching has been implemented. Whenever you create a session all info about it is recorded in ~/.sd_cache. When you quit sd, all sessions currently known are recorded in ~/.sd_cache. When sd is started, it reads ~/.sd_cache, displays all the sessions it finds there, and advertises any unexpired sessions that you created. The actions taken to start a new session are no longer wired into sd -- they're controlled by a TCL script that the user can replace or customize. The default script is part of sd (for reference purposes, the code is given in the file "sd_start.tcl" supplied with this distribution). But, if the file "~/.sd.tcl" exists, it will be read when sd starts and it can override or augment any part of the default script. [For (very sketchy) notes on this, see the file "sd_start.tcl" and get the tcl documents from sprite.berkley.edu:pub/tcl/*.ps.] There is now a 'delete' button that deletes the currently selected session. If the session is not one you created, all this does is delete the line from your sd window (the line will re-appear if you receive another advertisement for the session). If the session *is* one you created, it will be deleted from your window and from you cache and sd will stop advertising it. I.e., it will be *gone*. ---------------- v1.0beta Sat Nov 14 23:15:03 PST 1992 Van Jacobson, van@ee.lbl.gov This is the first release of the LBL "Session Directory" (sd). Sd provides: - A dynamically updated list of available sessions (e.g., vat audio conferences, nv or ivs video conferences, LBL whiteboard conferences). - An easy way to join any available session(s). - An easy way to create and advertise new session(s). USING SD -------- To use sd, just type "sd &" (i.e., run it in the background). You should see an X window with two panes & some buttons across the bottom. If you leave sd running, the top pane should slowly fill with session names (session announcements are made infrequently so announcements won't take up all the available network bandwidth). If you click on a session name, information about the session will appear in the bottom pane. If you double click on the name (or click on the "open" button), sd will start up the appropriate tools for the session (vat, nv, ivs and/or wb). NOTE: There are two versions of the sd binary in the distribution tar file: "sd" is a dynamically linked sparc executable and "sd.static" is a statically linked sparc executable. If you have any trouble with "sd", try "sd.static". CREATING A NEW SESSION ---------------------- NOTE: You *must* type a carriage return to terminate typing input -- just clicking the cursor on a button or in a different box will not work. (We agree that you shouldn't have to type the return but this is a beta version of the program & we haven't had time to fix that part of it yet. Soon.) If you want to create a new session, click on the "New" button. A dialog box with a lot of blanks to fill in will pop up. Click in the "Name" box and type a session name then hit carriage return (the cursor should move to the "Description" box), type in a description of the new session and hit carriage return. The "Create" button should light up & the bell will ring. This means sd has enough info to create the session. If you hit "Create" now, a new multicast audio session will be created. However, before hitting "Create", you might want to modify some defaults that sd has picked for the new session. By default, sd chooses a unique, non-conflicting multicast address, port and conference ID for the session. (These are selected when you open the new session window.) If you would rather use your own address, port or conference ID, click in the appropriate box and type it in (the automatically assigned address will disappear as soon as you click). The address can be either an IP address or DNS name. Port and ID must be integers in the range 1 to 65535. By default, only "audio" media is selected for the session. If you want to announce that the conference contains video and/or a whiteboard, click on the checkbox to the left of the media name. If you click on the media name (as opposed to the check box) a menu will pop up that lets you select media "attributes" (e.g., pcm/gsm/lpc audio encoding, ivs/nv video). The box marked "Scope" lets you select the "scope" (multicast ttl) of the session. "Site" is a ttl of 16, "Region" is a ttl of 32 and "World" is a ttl of 127. If you want to use some other ttl, click on the bottommost scope button & type in a number between 0 and 255. POSSIBLE PROBLEMS ----------------- If you try to open a session with audio media, sd will try to start up vat. If "vat" is not in your search path or has a different name, if will appear that nothing has happened. If you use vat for audio conferencing, make sure it's in your shell search path. If you use something else for audio conferencing (e.g., nevot), make a shell script called "vat" to invoke it. If you try to open a session with video media, sd will try to start up "nv" is the "nv" attribute was set on the session and "ivs" otherwise. If you want to start up video sessions with sd, make sure nv and/or ivs are in your search path. You probably don't have the LBL whiteboard (since we haven't done a general distribution yet). If someone sets "whiteboard" media on a session, sd will try to start up the program "wb". If there's something named "wb" in your search path, this attempt may cause problems. If you start sd with the flag "-w", it will not attempt to execute "wb" even if a session requests a whiteboard. Note: There are similar flags for audio and video -- "sd -v" will not attempt to start video sessions and "sd -a" will not attempt to start audio sessions. -------- That should be enough to get you started. Please let van@ee.lbl.gov know of any problems, suggestions, etc. Thanks. - Van Jacobson