software idea..

**djmickyg** · 05-03-2004, 01:58 AM

I had a stroke of genius on the ride home from work today… and now I’m just tiring to think if I’ve seen this somewhere else before..

All the programs that have been made for the car pc are great and thanks to all for doing them... But they are limited to what u can do. Most have Music Video GPS and radio..
I don’t have GPS or radio so those features are a waste to me.
What if I want other things like TV or OBD read outs phone control?

Why doesn’t someone make a program that is just a menu with something like 16 blank buttons on it...
And every other adds (module) is a new “program” on is a so people download the first menu program...
And then each module they want to add.. May it be mp3 playing.. GPS etc
They can download a separate file and load into a folder

So when the main program opens it will find all the modules in a certain folder and then display an icon for each on each button..
This way others can create different add-ons. And people can build different variants of the same programs so people have a choice?

This sound good to anyone?

**Enforcer** · 05-03-2004, 04:53 AM

Logistics would be a nightmare.

there would have to be some common ground, where the different apps/modules could communicate.

If different people are writing different modules, that could be a big big problem.

Nice thought though

**mpattonm** · 05-03-2004, 05:09 AM

Originally Posted by djmickyg

Why doesn’t someone make a program that is just a menu with something like 16 blank buttons on it...
And every other adds (module) is a new “program” on is a so people download the first menu program...
And then each module they want to add.. May it be mp3 playing.. GPS etc

This sound good to anyone?

But for this general purpose, lot of menu-like programs are out already.

**HybridMike** · 05-03-2004, 07:54 AM

Why doesn’t someone make a program that is just a menu with something like 16 blank buttons on it...

Mobile Media Center will have the abilitly for the end user to configure his own set of pages to configure. and put any core component they like there. for instance you make a button that will play mp3's...in the editor you send MMC's core the ASCII text: "PlayMp3" this command tells the core to play...sounds complex, but there will be a skin and layout editor for you too.

**jbors** · 05-03-2004, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by Enforcer

there would have to be some common ground, where the different apps/modules could communicate.

All addons should render the same screen or surface. They should know how to interact to each other and get signals from the main app to initialize, unintialize and such.
I would say the way Freevo works may be what you're looking for. You can write your own plugins and connect them on fly through XML. But it is on Linux only...
So it's just the matter of certain interface support which is a real challenge to develop. You cannot write abstract app and connect it to any other app for free.

**samael** · 05-04-2004, 03:42 AM

pfffft it'd be easy. Of course the caveat is that your going to write a new app from scratch, and everyone else thinks its a good idea.
If you were starting from scratch, and did a little bit of extra design (couple of hours brainstorming wiht someone) on top of what your already doing, the implementation would be quite easy.