The Surface Editor - Overview
An Information Surface in Qmatic Orchestra is a surface where the system can show information of some kind. The Information Surfaces available at a Branch are: Touchscreens on printers, Tickets, Media displays, Positional displays and Workstation Terminals. Many of these surfaces display web pages.
On the displays on TP Touch/Intro 8 Printers, Intro 17 and Vision there are, of course, ticket buttons in the form of images.
The Surface Editor is the tool used for creating and editing Surface Applications to manage the information on these Surfaces. These Applications are connected to units in a branch, usually at the Branch profile level. Then they are connected to physical devices at a Branch by having the Application selected from a drop-down list in the settings page of the Unit.
It is possible to create a special Role for this application. It could for example be called Market Coordinator.
This is the main page of the Surface Editor while editing a Surface Application, in this case a Touch Screen for a TP Touch:
The following features are available:
• File menu - containing the choices New, Open, Save, Save as, Delete and Preview.
The
Preview option is only available for central Branches.
• Settings menu - containing tw choices: Surface settings and Manage resolutions.
Surface settings opens the Application settings window for the surface that you are creating. Here, you can, for example select the applicable Operation profile.
Manage resolutions opens the Manage resolutions window, where you can add or remove resolutions for generic or custom device types:
To add a resolution, enter the values in the empty boxes, then click the + button. To remove a resolution, simply click the trash can button next to the resolution that you want to remove. Newly added resolutions will immediately be available when creating new surfaces.
It is not possible to remove
all resolutions for a surface type.
• Navigation button - clicking this button opens up the Navigation panel:
Here, all components of the layout are listed. This way, it is possible to find components that are hidden in the layout. Three actions can be performed on a component here: Remove, Bring to front and Send to back.
• Canvas area - the layout of the surface application being edited.
• Current page area - here you can see the name of the current page. You can also click on the Pages button, which is described below.
• Pages button - clicking this button opens the Application Pages panel:
In the Application Pages panel you can duplicate, add, or delete pages.
Depending on which kind of surface application you are creating, there are certain rules that apply to the Application Pages:
• The Startpage for a Touch Application may never be deleted.
• For Media displays and Positional displays, you will always have a Startpage and a Callpage.
• For Ticket layouts, the number of pages depends on if you selected Single or Double in the Application Settings window.
• Component properties area - the properties of the component being edited: text, font properties, links to other pages and the like.
• Components area - at the bottom is a list of rectangles representing components that can be inserted, by drag and drop, onto the canvas: buttons, images and the like.
• View area - here are sliders for Zoom level and Grid resolution as well as the coordinates and dimensions of the component being edited. These values can be edited directly for most components.
