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support/3rd_party/vlc/sdk/activex/README.TXT

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+== ACTIVEX Control for VLC ==
+
+The VLC ActiveX Control has been primary designed to work with Internet
+Explorer. However it may also work with Visual Basic and/or .NET. Please
+note, that this code does not rely upon Microsoft MFC/ATL code, hence
+good compatibility is not guaranteed.
+
+I. Compiling
+
+The ActiveX Control should compile without any glitches as long as you
+have the latest version of mingw gcc and headers.
+
+In order to script the ActiveX Control on Internet Explorer, a type
+library is required. This type library is usually generated from an IDL
+file using Microsoft MIDL compiler. Therefore, for convenience I have
+checked in the output of the MIDL compiler in the repository so that you
+will only need the MIDL compiler if you change axvlc.idl. the generated
+files are as follow:
+
+axvlc_idl.c
+axvlc_idl.h
+axvlc.tlb
+
+To use the MIDL compiler on cygwin, you will need to set some
+environment variables before configuring vlc. If you have a copy of
+'Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0' installed, the following settings are
+correct:
+
+export PATH=$PATH:"/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/COMMON/MSDev98/Bin":"/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/VC98/Bin"
+export INCLUDE='C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Include'
+export MIDL="midl"
+
+If you are cross-compiling on Linux, you can use 'widl' which is part of
+the WINE project (http://www.winehq.com). At leat wine-dev-0.9.57 works,
+the comand line to compile IDL should looks like the following :
+
+widl -I/usr/include/wine/windows/ \
+	-h -H axvlc_idl.h -t -T axvlc.tlb -u -U axvlc_idl.c axvlc.idl
+
+NOTE: widl breaks compatibility with Visual Basic. If that is important
+to you then you must use midl.
+
+II. Debugging
+
+The ActiveX control is compiled with verbose output by default, but you
+will need to launch Internet Explorer from a Cygwin shell to see the
+output. Alternatively, the plugin will also use the VLC preferences, so
+if you enable the file logging interface through the player and save the
+preferences, the control will automatically log its verbose output into
+the designated file.
+
+Debugging the ActiveX control DLL with GNU GDB can be difficult.
+Fortunately the ActiveX control can also be compiled as an executable
+rather than a DLL. In ActiveX terms, this is called a local server. The
+advantage of a local server is that it will never crash its client,
+i.e. Internet Explorer, even if the local server crashes. The build
+system does not currently allow to create an executable version of the
+ActiveX control, you will need to manually define the BUILD_LOCALSERVER
+pre-processor variable and modify the Makefile to exclude the '-shared'
+option at the linking stage. Once this is done, launch axvlc.exe to have
+a working Activex control. Please note, that executable version of the
+ActiveX control will override any settings required for the DLL version,
+which will no longer work until you (re)register it as shown in the
+following section
+
+III. Local Install
+
+The VLC NSIS installer will install the ActiveX Control without
+requiring any further manual intervention, but for people who like to
+live on the edge, here are the steps you need to perform once you have
+built the ActiveX Control.
+
+The ActiveX control DLL file may be copied anywhere on the target
+machine, but before you can use the control, you will need to register
+it with Windows by using the REGSVR32 command, as per following example:
+
+REGSVR32 C:\WINDOWS\AXVLC.DLL
+
+If the control needs to use external VLC plugins (i.e other than the
+built-in ones), make sure that the plugin path is set in the registry as
+per following example:
+
+[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VideoLAN\VLC]
+InstallDir="C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC"
+
+The InstallDir must be the parent directory of the 'plugins' directory.
+
+WARNING: Both control and plugins must come from the same source build
+tree. Otherwise, at best, the control will not play any content,
+at worse it may crash Internet Explorer while attempting to load
+incompatible plugins.
+
+IV. Internet Install
+
+The activex control may be installed from a remote through Internet
+Installer if it is packaged up in a CAB file. The following link
+explains how to achieve this
+
+http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/components/activex/packaging.asp
+
+For convenience, I have provided a sample axvlc.INF file, which assumes
+that the VLC NSIS Installer has been packaged up a CAB file called
+AXVLC.CAB.
+
+The ActiveX Control DLL file can also be distributed by itself if it has
+been compiled with built-in VLC plugins; check developer information for
+more information on built-in plugins.
+