advice for application

[Tom Fishwick <tom zworg com>]

Hi there!

I need to write a program for x windows to display ads in various ways. 
I've done a _little_ work in gtk and qt (about a year ago though) so am
not totally in the dark about how it all works.  I've written up a brief
description of what I'm looking to do (below).  Any comments/sugestions
would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

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A way to display different ads in different places in different sizes on
the screen (mostly they will be 42" to 50" plasma displays).  Several
ads may be displayed on the screen at the same time in different places
so showing an mpeg and ticket tape must both work smoothly.  Ability to
overlay ads on others (such as a ticket tape or still image over a
movie).  Ability to set a background color/image for each frame/window
(or whatever will contain an ad).  Stability is also very important.

Types of ads may include:
        - movie: mpeg with SMPEG or mtv api's.  any good players for avi, asf?
        - image: animated gif, png, jpeg
        - flash: ?? standalone player for linux?
        - text: static, or scrolling text vertically or horizontally, or
replacing text (ie. a temperature gauge, stock watcher).  I'm assuming
the widget set (gtk, qt or tk?) can take care of this no problem.

C++ is the preferred language.  I'm thinking creating a viewer program
that will be able to handle all the different ad types and be able to
place itself on any part of the screen, set it's background color
etc...  so a viewer may be started up to display scrolling text on the
bottom 1/4 of the display.  and another instance of the viewer would be
started up to display still images on the top 3/4 of the display.

Another method may be creating one window to cover the whole screen and
separating it into frames?