File Selection without freezing

vvvv beta question
1

Hi there everyone, I know a lot of people around here ask about how to avoid having VVVV freeze when a file open dialog box is open. Well over the weekend I decided to finally do something to address the issue.

I made a little program seperate from VVVV that listens for and replies to requests for filenames over OSC. Then I made a little VVVV module that interfaces with it and launches it automagically when you create the first instance of it.

So if you download Selektor from e-mu.org and unzip it into the modules directory you can create selektor (file) instances and attach the output to nodes that need a filename.

Enjoy file browsing without freezing!

Note that this was a quick and dirty hack so I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a bug or two, if you find one please tell me and I’ll try to fix it.
[http://e-mu.org|
http://e-mu.org]

2

wow, this is great, thanks! but anyway, its a shame that finally a user has to take care by himselve about this…

3

Application cannot find MFC71.DLL

but
great idea!

4

Well what do you know. That’s why you get people to test your stuff! There I put the file in the zip and re-uploaded it, try downloading it again from e-mu.org kalle.

Now how can I update the file I just uploaded to the user modules here…?

5

Hey!
I’ve just tried it and this is very nice to finally have such a simple and interruption-free file selector!
But a help patch would be really great!
;)

6

Wow, it works, tested it with some textures, and my LFO keeps running, while it would freeze doing it the old way.

Great work :)

Up it on the Wiki, put it on the next release, I don’t care, as long as it doesn’t get lost!!

Owh… and great website you have there!! :)

7

yes, should be included in the next release…

8

Thanks, thats really cool.
You can even select multiple files with it, its perfect.

i tiedid up your patch a little bit and did some small changes.

  • added a togedge below the “select file” inlet to avoid endless opening dialogs when setting the inlet permanent to 1.

  • turned off “show window with shell” execute to have less windows in every day usage.

-added a helpfile

download: http://vvvv.org/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=929

now were waiting for asynchronous textureloading ;)

9

Great! Thanks elektromeier. I just uploaded your new version to my site (slightly modified to give you credit of course).
Now if only asynchronous texture loading was so easy to fix ;)

10

Can I request an addition to this?

It would be great if you could control the position of the file dialog - at the moment there is a risk that it opens in a position that obscures something important.

If the sources are available in Visual C++ I could probably do the edit myself!

Thanks

11

Hi AlphaBetter,

Actually it’s a deadly simple python program. Here’s the code:

{CODE(ln=>1)}
import osc
import sys, os, time
import win32ui
import win32con

def GetFiles(msg):
print “gettingfies”
replyPort = msg02
directory = msg03
filetypes = msg04
dlg = win32ui.CreateFileDialog(1,
None,
None,
(win32con.OFN_FILEMUSTEXIST|
win32con.OFN_EXPLORER|
win32con.OFN_ALLOWMULTISELECT),
‘User Files (’ + filetypes + ‘)|’+filetypes+'|All Files (.)|.*||')
if len(directory):
dlg.SetOFNInitialDir(directory)
dlg.SetOFNTitle(‘Select Files’)
testvalue = dlg.DoModal()
if testvalue == win32con.IDOK:
for path in dlg.GetPathNames():
print “Sending back “, path
osc.sendMsg(”/filedialog/reply”, dlg.GetPathNames(), “127.0.0.1”, int(replyPort)) # send normal msg

def myTest():
osc.init()
inSocket = osc.createListener(“127.0.0.1”, 10406) # in this case just using one socket

# bind addresses to functions -> printStuff() function will be triggered everytime a
# "/test" labeled message arrives
osc.bind(GetFiles, "/filedialog/request")

while 1:
    osc.getOSC(inSocket) 
    time.sleep(0.1)

if name == ‘main’:
print “Welcome to Selektor, your silly little OSC file manager”
print “A quick and dirty hack by Rob King, 2006”
myTest()
^

Feel free to modify as you like!

12

Would anyone know how to change the code so the selektor could also be used to select a directory and not just a specific file?