Basic Snowmix Scripting

Snowmix offers both basic scripting and advanced scripting. This page will present how to do basic scripting and it is recommended that the concepts for basic scripting is well understood before advanced scripting is undertaken.

Script Examples.

• Basic scripting example Digital Counter
• Advanced scripting example Analogue Swiss Clock

Command macros.

The fundamental concept behind the basic scripting is the definition and use of command macros. For additional reading on command macros beyond this page, please see the reference manual on command macro related commands listed on the Reference Manual page.

Command macros are defined using the Snowmix command:

with a name of the macro intended to create as argument. Every line of commands following the command command create, is added to the command macro created rather than executed until the command command end is given. If the command command create is given again with an already existing command macro name, command lines until the command command end are added to the specified command macro. The following example creates a single command macro named MyFirstCommand:

Now the first thing to understand is that every command macro has an individual execution pointer that points to the line to be executed the next time the command macro is executed.

The next thing to understand is that when executing a command macro all lines in a macro is executed in line order from the line pointed to by the execution pointer until there is a line with the keywords next or loop or the execution pointer has reached the end of the command macro.

The third thing to understand is that when executing a command macro containing another macro name as a command, that other macro is executed according to the same 3 conditions listed here and then the execution of the macro referencing the other macro is continued until execution reach end of the macro or one of the two keywords next or loop.

So execution of a command macro line by line continues including execution of command macros referenced within the command macro until there are no more lines to execute or the execution reaches one of the two keywords next and loop.

Next, loop and the execution pointer..

When the next statement is identified while executing a command macro line by line, execution of the macro is suspended and the execution pointer of the macro is advanced to the line after the keyword next. Next time the command macro is executed, execution will continue from where the macros execution pointer points. If the next statement is followed by a positive integer N in the same line, the next N statement is treated as if there were a N number of lines with the next statement.

When the loop statement is identified while executing a command macro line by line, execution of the macro is suspended and the execution pointer of the macro is reset to point at the first line of the macro. Next time the command macro is executed, execution will continue from the beginning of the macro. If a macro does not end with a loop statement, the macro's execution pointer will eventually point beyond the last line. When that happends, additional calls to the macro, effectively executing the macro, will have no effect. If the loop statement is followed by a positive integer N in the same line, the loop statement reset the command pointer to the first line N number of times. The next time the loop statement is reached after being reached N times, the loop statement is treated as if it was a next statement. Using that it is possible to loop for N times the macro is called and then after that continue in the macro in lines below if any.

The execution pointer can be reset to point at the first line of a macro using the command command restart as shown below:

The command command restart will also reset any counters, if any, for next and loop commands possibly part of the macro being 'restarted'.

To see which line the execution pointer for a macro is currently at, the following command can be used:

To set the command line pointer at a specific line or after the last line, the following two commands can be used:

Execution flow.

The following example deletes first the previous created command macro and then creates the 3 new command macros MyFirstCommand, MySecondmacro and MyThirdExample:

Initilly, the execution pointer for all 3 macros points at the first line of the macro. When the first command macro is executed, the following lines are executed:

Now execution of the macro MyFirstCommand reaches the statement next in its second line the execution is suspended while its execution pointer is set to point to the third line. The result is that text string 1 is set to 'Hello my friend'.

The next time the command macro MyFirstCommand is executed, execution happens from line 3 in the macro as shown below:

Now text string 1 is set to 'How is your day' and text string 2 is set to 'My day is fine'. Further more execution of macro MySecondmacro reaches a loop statement in its third line, so execution of that macro is suspended and its execution pointer is set to point to the first line of that macro. After that execution of the macro MyFirstCommand continues, but here the statement next is reached in its 4th line. Execution is now suspended and the execution pointer is set to line 5.

The next time the command macro MyFirstCommand is executed, execution happens from line 5 in the macro as shown below:

The 5th line of MyFirstCommand is a call to macro MyThirdExample so that macro gets executed. Doing so, the text string 1 is now set to 'What a wonderful weather' before reaching the next statement in the second line of MyThirdExample. This suspends the execution of macro MyThirdExample and the 6th line of the macro MyFirstCommand is executed. Here we reach a loop statement so execution of macro MyFirstCommand is suspended while its execution pointer is set to point at the first line of the macro.

The next time MyFirstCommand is called, line 1 and 2 of the macro is executed. The next time the macro is called, line 4 and 5 of the macro is executed. Executing line 4 will now result in executing line 1, 2 and 3 of the macro MySecondmacro and so on.

Creating a macro within a macro.

Snowmix does not support creating a macro within a macro as this would require the following to be valid:

However when the first command end is detected, this signals the end of the definition of the macro MyFirstMacro and not the macro MySecondMacro that doesn't exist at this points. The second command end will result in a syntax error message safely to ignore. The result is the macro MyFirstMacro with the following content:

However, even though this is not recommended, there is a workaround around this. Using the command command addatline, it is possible to add the necessary command end as shown here:

will result in in the macro MyFirstMacro containing the commands

and when the macro is called, it will create the macro MySecondMacro containing the line 'text string 1 some text'.

COnditional execution.

Please see the if, else, endif section in the reference manual for commands Reference Manual page for details on conditional execution.

The following example shows a conditional execution where the state of feed is is shown as text and updated every 10 frames.

Obviously, the command macro DisplayState4Feed1 needs to be included in the command macro set with the command overlay pre or overlay finish to ensure the script is called at framerate.