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Media Lecture Board (MLB) is an advanced shared white board program, authored at the Universities of Mannheim and Freiburg.

MLBService wraps MLB version 1.1 as an AG2.3 node service, allowing it to be added to a node in the same way as video and audio services. A new instance of MLB is started when a room is entered. Other AG session participants in the same room who are using MLBService will share the same whiteboard session.

Available Download

NB: These applications have been published in the AG Central repository.

Installation Instructions and Notes

Depending on how your AG toolkit is installed, you may need to be root user to perform the installation

• copy the Linux MLBService.zip file to the directory /etc/AccessGrid/NodeServices

Windows:

• copy the Windows MLBService.zip file to the directory c:\Program Files\AGTk-2.3\NodeServices

Usage:

• from the VenueClient, select Preferences->Manage My Node. In the management gui which appears, select a ServiceManager (or add one); it should probably be the Service Manager which runs on the machine that the operator is using i.e. display machine.
  
• now select Service->Add and choose MLBService from the list of available services. Whenever a room is entered, a new instance of MLB is created (or any already running MLBService instance is joined).
• start a new shared page from the "Documents" area on the left hand side of the MLB window by clicking on the "new Page" icon.

Gotchas:

1. (Windows only) drawing activity at the initiating MLB instance is slow to propogate to instances at other sites which have joined (rather than started) the MLB session.
2. There is an AG toolkit bug, which results in an incorrect extraction of this service (and some others). There is a fix in CVS which hasn't reached the general release packages yet (May 2005). Download the fixed file (Types.py), or retrieve it from CVS, and copy it to
   
• for Linux, to directory /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/AccessGrid/
  
• for Windows, to directory c:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\AccessGrid\

Acknowledgements

Universities of Mannheim and Freiburg for Media Lecture Board
Funding through UQVislab, QPSF and APAC Collaborative Services Group

Any comments, suggestions to Chris Willing <willing at itee.uq.edu.au>