Cuperino
commented
4 years ago Hello @tweirtx,
Don't worry, I used Microsoft Word as teleprompter software for a concert once. The reasons why inspired the complete re-write we're doing to Imaginary Teleprompter.
It is possible to implement what you're asking. Unfortunately I won't be able to help much because we've been struggling for years to find the time to work on the re-write and we're not adding new features to the existing version for the same reason. If there's a good aspect to the COVID19 pandemic reaching my country is that I've been able to resume development, but there's still a good deal of work to go before version 3.0 is published.
In order to implement the ability to import from Google Docs one would need to pull the data using the Google Docs API. One would then create a user interface that lets users setup their own API keys, and add a button to request pulling updates. Finally, and this is the hard part about implementing this feature, the data from Google Docs would need to be parsed and converted to Imaginary Teleprompter's format, which is just an HTML file using relative units for every measurement. Using fixed units in the HTML breaks dynamic text/window resizing, and the ability to use more than one instance at a time.
- This link shows how to pull a document: https://developers.google.com/docs/api/reference/rest/v1/documents/get
- This one shows the received documents will be encoded in JSON form. This JSON would need to be parsed and converted to Imaginary Teleprompter's HTML: https://developers.google.com/docs/api/reference/rest/v1/documents#Document
There's a remote chance we might add this feature but it won't happen any time soon. I find it more likely we'll add .DOC support first and implement remote collaboration directly into Imaginary Teleprompter using CKEditor's built in collaboration features. CKEditor is the library we chose to provide the in editing capabilities in Imaginary Teleprompter. We moved from CKEditor 4 to CKEditor 5 with the re-write.
- https://ckeditor.com/collaboration/
- https://ckeditor.com/docs/cs/latest/guides/collaboration/quick-start.html
- https://ckeditor.com/docs/ckeditor5/18.0.0/features/collaboration/real-time-collaboration/real-time-collaboration-integration.html
The advantage of implementing Google Docs or Drive support is that their services are free and the API's cheap. Meanwhile using CKEditor's collaboration features will require users to pay a subscription fee to CKSource or ourselves, given we sub-license the technology for the back-end infrastructure. For this particular reason, I find Google Docs support would best be added in the form of a plugin.
Imaginary Teleprompter 3.0 uses a modular plugin structure that's currently in the works. There's no documentation on how to use it yet because we're actively defining it as we port or write new features in the form of plugins. We'll make sure to document how people can write their own plugins after the software is published.
tweirtx
I am the technical lead for a high school broadcast program. Currently, we use Google Docs as a teleprompting software (not my choice, haha). I would love to move to Imaginary Teleprompter, but the feature that the teacher who oversees the program would like is the ability to automatically import a Google Doc to the teleprompter. Bonus points for automatic reload, as this is the main feature he harps on (the ability to make modifications to the script on a different computer after the show's production has started).
Would something like this be possible?