Feature Request:

[William Ryan]

It bugs me to even bring this up, but I'm just about ready to cry uncle on
this one...

The VoiceRecorder control needs a real interface. I am totally positive on
the CF and adore many things about it, but using the voice recorder is a
nightmare. Let me explain. (and I am proposing a viable solution not just
venting). Let's say that you want to give the users the ability to record
outside of notes, in a manner that allows them to automatically have files
named and track those files. Lets also say that you want to give the user a
real recorder interface, 'real' being defined as something a 60+ year old
Physician could easily use.

You are a CF programmer. You find the wonderful life saver of an example by
Neil Cowburn. Then you see what Casey Chestnut did with it. Then you look
at the OpennetCF library and life looks good <Opennetcf is probably the best
thing that has happened to PPC> Then you find out that there's one really
ugly problem. If you choose to not show the recorder and opt for sending in
WinProc Messages from behind your own controls it appears to work great.
EXCEPT that you can't show the recorder modally or none of your messages
can be sent/received. Big deal right? As long as the user hits the correct
buttons, all is well. But if you don't show it modally, and the user clicks
anywhere on the form, the recorder loses focus and you are in s**tsville.
the recorder loses focus and stops recording. I've tried everythign under
the sun to override this, but in managed code, I'm starting to think I can't
get there. If I don't actually show the recorder and use SendMessages
instead, and the user does anything that causes another control to get
focus..I'm done.

Ok, so I can disable everything right? Wrong. If I disable the form, then
none of my messages will cause another control to get focus so I'm fine.
EXCEPT for the fact that I can't trap anything to send my own custom
messages.

My humble suggestions:


PDA's are widely being used in professions such as Law and Medicine. As
such, developers need to come up with custom solutions. The voicerecorder
is a very important feature and is effectively ignored by MS. As someone
who avidly pushes the CF and really appreciates what MS is doing, I have a
lot of trouble with this whole area. If it weren't for Neil, Casey and
Chris, I don't think any newbie to the CF would ever figure out how to
manipulate the recorder in managed code. Why doesn't MSDN tell me that I
can't use VB.NET (not that I would anyway, but was just making a point) to
work the recorder?

At persent, I think I've combed every inch of the planet to find out how to
do this in the CF, and maybe I've missed something and am showing my
ignorance. however, I can honestly say that I've tried everything I can
think of. i've exhausted most every avenue that I can think of. And if I'm
still out of luck, then certianly newbie programmers wouldn't even have a
clue how to get this far.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and the MS Team does a killer job. Guys like
Neil, Chris and Casey are nothing short of divine for what they do. But MS
really needs to throw a bone to people trying to use the recorder.

Bill

--
Cordially,

W.G. Ryan
(e-mail address removed)
www.devbuzz.com
www.knowdotnet.com

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

The issue is that you're trying to interface with another application. The
CF really has nothing to do with it. What you actually need are classes for
handling recording and playing WAV files so you can bypass the kludge of
trying to use a separate app for recording. Take a look at the OpenNETCF
multimedia library for a start.

 

[William Ryan]

Chris:

Agreed, I've been using the Multimedia library for playing .wav files, but
have had trouble with recording. I understand what you are saying...but I
guess the point I was trying to make is that this is a pretty important
feature and if it weren't for the stuff you guys are doing out there,
there's no way most people would figure all of this out in a reasonable time
frame. I've tried everything under the sun trying to get the recorder to
work, and it would have been nice to know in advance that "you can't get
there from here."

I know MS has a lot to do and stuff like this probably isn't being demanded
or they would have done it already, I guess I was just venting my
frustration...

Thanks again,

Bill

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

I fully agree that a lot is missing (that's the entire reason we started
OpenNETCF). IMHO, if you're going to spend any time trying to get recording
working, it's much better spent trying to get the Multimedia library working
the way you like for several reasons: it's portable (there's no recorder in
vanilla CE), it's extensible, it's maintainable, and it helps the community.
Additionally, you can probably garner some help in getting it working by
posting questions/snippets etc. here or in the OpenNETCF Forums.

 

[William Ryan]

Chris:

I really appreciate your post, and I have some stuff that I'm actually
formatting and ready to submit to you guys for possible consideration. I'm
kind of stuck b/c I'm working on an app that centers around the
VoiceRecorder. I've invested a bunch of time getting it to work, and I did
something kind of dumb. I couldn't fix the modal issue so I just decided to
get everythingn else working and not get caught up on it at the expense of
everything else. I got stuck a few times, but managed to get through it.
For part of our problem, we contracted with Dan Fergus at Wintellect and it
was great gettting to work with him. He did some great stuff for us and is
one of the coolest folks I've ever worked with. But now I have an app that
does everything it needs to except this problem, which pretty much
invalidates a lot of what I did. I have to basically put in a kluge and
make the user hold the recorder button down until they are done recording.
The Multimedia library is great and anything I can contribute I will. (I'm
also very excited about helping with the MessageQueue library). It's just
that this is basic stuff in many regards, at least as far as what developers
might want to manipulate. I had to learn the nuances of .wav just to get
what I did accomplished. If/when we need to make recording available in
..vox it'll be a lot more work. And I guess that's my frustration, not so
much that it's a lot to learn...heck that's the best part of this job, but
not knowing where to even find stuff or know what to look for. I definitely
don't blame MS or anyone else for the fact that I gambled on getting
everything else to work and assuming that I could use the methodology I was
using with a trick or two and fix the focus problem. But as a developer,
it's kind of difficult to get 99% done with something and spend over three
weeks trying to find that missing but critical 1% and knowing that you went
down the wrong road. However, I learned a heck of a lot in the process and
it just means I have some more new stuff to learn.

Actually, I'm going in early tomorrow and Sunday so I can get this done and
then get on to something fun like Messaging. I have to talk to Dan about
what we did, but we are going to post what was done with OpenNetCF and I
think it'll definitely be a nice addition to the Audio Library. You know
though, if it weren't for opennetcf/innovativedss/brainsnbrawn - I think I'd
be a pessimist by now.

thanks again,

bill