Bollawax Bollard SDK

The SDK for building on the Pop Boll platform: docks, routines, apps and tools that talk to a Bollawax device or to its web twin, and that read corpora the way the platform does, respecting each corpus's licence and settings.

Status: 0.1.0, the first version, shipped with Bollawax 0.2.4. Its interfaces may still change between 0.x versions. The corpus client, the device layer, routines, the matrix engine and the browser binding are built; the dock protocol, the deck client and the Glass Snipler types are placeholders. Of the specifications under spec/, the software pages are current with this version and the hardware pages are speculative drafts: bollard.md is version 1, the interface under the Boll's foot, and the specification for the cart and its docks is not written (spec/bollardeck.md §20 records what is decided).

Pop Boll builds its own device images and web apps on this SDK. What you install is what we run.

Layout

Install (from a checkout)

pip install .

import bollardeck
print(bollardeck.__version__, bollardeck.SPEAKS)

import bollardeck.schema as schema
print(schema.validate("licence", {"scope": "morpus_only", "store_audio": True}))
# [Problem(pointer='/store_audio', message='must be false, not true', keyword='const')]

Corpora

from bollardeck.corpus import HubClient, discover

found = discover(roots=["/media/sd/corpora"], hub=HubClient("https://hub.example", token=TOKEN))
for corpus in found.corpora:
    verdict = corpus.may("study")                 # the gate: never raises, always says why
    if verdict:
        pairs = corpus.study_pairs(verdict)       # content takes the verdict; there is no other way in
    else:
        print(corpus.id, verdict.reason, verdict.detail)

help(bollardeck.corpus) is the usage guide; examples/corpus_from_a_fake_hub.py runs without a network. The gate's behaviour is pinned by conformance/corpus-gate/.

A hub's read token alone is study only for a corpus that is not public. To reach such a corpus's tracks, audio, art and bundles, say who the client acts for: HubClient(..., acting_for="ada@example.org") or hub.corpus(id, acting_for=...). The name goes in the X-Pop-For header, never in a URL, and is self-declared until sign-in arrives. Also there: CorpusUnavailable and NotAvailable carry a reason and the hub's status; corpus.open_audio_ranged(file, verdict, range_header=...) gives a relay the source's status and headers; hub.listing().from_cache; corpus.manifest_view() (read-only, no copy); hub.corpus_gate() (the hub's rollout switch, enforce or report). A clock that is set back does not reopen an expired licence held in a cache.

The device layer and routines

bollardeck.device is the hardware abstraction (with a registry so a board family registers itself from outside), button cues, the gesture engine, the keymap resolver and device identity; bollardeck.routines is the routine API. Each module's docstring is its usage guide. To see them work together on the simulator:

python3 examples/device_on_sim.py

A key source may say when a press begins ("<button> down [t_ms]", hal.base.key_line(1, down=True)). That is a hint and never a gesture: a press is a tap or a hold by the hold_ms its release states, and every Gesture carries that hold_ms. A routine.yaml may also be one JSON object.

bollardeck.matrix makes the frames of the 13 x 8 LED matrix and its three RGB LEDs, byte for byte what js/bollardeck.matrix.js makes (conformance/matrix/, 1,135 vectors):

from bollardeck import matrix
frame = matrix.glyph("boot", 0)            # also film, playback, idle, corpus, dj, text, premiere, tone
frame.to_bytes(), frame.hex(), matrix.to_ascii(frame)

The keymap (bollardeck.constants.KEYMAP, schema/keymap.schema.json) says what each button gesture means, and conformance/gestures/, conformance/cues/ and conformance/cue-render/ pin the behaviour for every binding. conformance/DECISIONS.md says what the SDK does where the schemas and the pages left room.

Working on it

python3 -m unittest discover -s tests     # also runs the Node tests when node is installed
node --test tests/js/*.test.js            # the browser binding alone
python3 tools/generate.py                 # after changing constants/ or schema/
python3 tools/pin_vectors.py              # after changing how a cue or a matrix frame is drawn

jsonschema and PyYAML, when installed, cross-check the SDK's own validator and its reader for routine.yaml. Neither is needed to use the SDK; CI installs both for the tests.

popbollard is Pop Boll's own repository for Bollawax, and it is closed. Where a tool or a test here names it (tools/sync_spec.py --from, the BOLLARD_SDK_POPBOLLARD environment variable of tests/test_reality.py and tests/test_corpus_reality.py), that is a check for its maintainers: it reads a checkout of that repository and is skipped without one. Nothing in the SDK needs it.

In a page

<script src="js/bollardeck.js"></script>
<script>
  bollardeck.schema.validate("licence", {scope: "morpus_only", store_audio: true});
  bollardeck.cues.at([{button: 1, state: "pulse", role: "go"}], performance.now());
  bollardeck.matrix.glyph("boot", 0);
</script>

One tag loads the whole binding: the validator (the twin of bollardeck.schema in Python), the button cue helpers, the LED matrix frame engine, the gesture engine and keymap resolver, and the corpus gate with a hub client on fetch, with optional helpers for elements and a canvas. js/README.md is the reference, examples/browser/index.html runs from disk, and node --test tests/js/*.test.js runs its tests. conformance/matrix/ and conformance/cue-render/ hold the behaviour vectors it must pass (tools/pin_vectors.py writes their expected values), and tools/generate.py writes js/bollardeck.schemas.js.

CHANGELOG.md lists what each version added and changed.

Versions

The SDK has its own version (sdk-v<version> tags). It is not the Bollawax image version. bollardeck.SPEAKS lists the wire and format versions this SDK speaks, and bollardeck.MIN_BOLLAWAX is the oldest Bollawax release it is tested against.

Contributing

Pull requests are closed for now; see CONTRIBUTING.md. Issues are welcome.

Licence

Code: Apache-2.0 (LICENSE). Specification text in spec/: CC BY 4.0, "Pop Boll, by Graham Smith" (LICENSES/CC-BY-4.0.txt). See NOTICE for names and trademarks.