Generating executable movies and emulation
An executable movie can be generated at any time by pressing the generate
icon button on the left hand toolbar. The settings tab allows you to
define what combination of applet, iappli and midlet is to be created.
A progress bar will display and if any potential problems that were encountered a message
panel will display. Usually these messages will be warnings of potential problems.
Most typically:
- Trying to load an image type into the wrong executable eg. a gif into a midlet
- Warning that some layers will not be displayed because they lack events
- Warning if the executable size exceeds specified limits
Note that layers with no events will not be included in the final movie and no movie
will be generated if there are no events for any layer.
Emulation
The 'Emulate' menu option in the menu bar is a convenience function that allows the running of emulators (or browser)
from within the editor.
It also allows the setting of the command lines to run the emulators. It should be noted that the product
does not come with emulators contained within the product. It is up to the user to download and install the required
emulators. (Sun provides a free Midlet emulator at http://java.sun.com and DoCoMo provide
emulators at http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp). Taking JAD and JAR file output and running these files outside of
the editor is an alternative to using this feature.
The product performs emulation by running the command lines for emulators. The default command lines used by the product
are provided as a convenience only and may not be correct. They can be edited in the 'Emulate options' dialog. They
are suited to installations on windows machines using the emulators provided by Sun and DoCoMo with default installation
directory names and should be modified according to individual configurations. Note that the product places the
path of the file to run immediately after the command line supplied and if a space is expected before the path then
a space should be appended at the end of the command line.
The product also provides three standard windows settings for running a movie as an applet.
These allow the applet to be run by the Sun's 'appletviewer' tool, by MS Internet
Explorer and by Netscape Navigator 6.
Emulation messages
After emulation as an iappli or midlet is complete the user can choose to display:
- Nothing
- Messages that went to standard output.
Normal messages always begin with
the actual command line executed and this can be useful for diagnosing a command line problem.
- Any error messages
- Both error messages as well as normal messages
It should be noted that the DOJA imode emulator will not display any non-error messages if execution
is terminated by closing the execution window prematurely. Looping movies may therefore not
show non-error messages. It is up to the emulator used which messages are classified as
error messages and which are not.