Project Information and Searches

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Project information describe the contents of your project which consist of a name, description, keywords, categories and an address. Typically, you use project information for a large setup with many ntb project files. Therefore it is use in conjunction with a Search Group that searches and sort your project (ntb) files accordingly, to your display areas.

A project has an ownership, it can be set as owner, branch, client or anonymous. When the ownership is a branch, client or anonymous, it needs to reference an owner in it's target address. (figure 2)

For a search to be conducted, it first picks up all "Owner" as it's primary button to be schedule for display. When a particular owner turn to display, another search is then conducted to pick up all "Branches", "Clients" and "Anonymous" that belongs to this owner and together will form a cluster of files for display.

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Icon

Icon is required. It is use as the face of a button whenever neccessary.

Addresses

An address describe a location, it may contains one or several lines and it should be unique.

Categories

Categories are loosely define to also include the name, description and keywords when a search is conducted.

Links

Links contains dynamic menus or displays.

Menu Link

a. When a link ntb file is assoicated to a Window it is considered as a series of menus associated to that Window.
b. The menu items are the result of the searches that you define in the link ntb file.
c. Therefore in the link ntb, you should have at least a button Window that defines your search criteria.

Display Link

a. A display link is associated with the Screen and it superseeds the Host's Search Group display. All subscribers to the owner are directed to it's displays according to their search criteria.

Leftover items

Leftover are items are not sieve out by the "Owner" link, therefore these items would be pass to the Host to be directed to any of it's display area.

Search Process

There are 2 main type of searches, by addresses or categories ( name, description, keywords and categories ). You can setup one or a combination of both types of searches. A search can also be designed to pick owner's type.

Searching can only be done in a search group. Within the search group, you can define how searches are being located or directed through the use of buttons ( or simply an item on the Window canvas with touches setup ) and display window ( which also contains buttons with search touches setup ).

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For an example of how to conduct your searches using the project information, look at the Search Group - Street Example.



For a detail example for setting up the various subscribers and re-direction to the various display areas, look at the Village example.

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Hosting Site

With the ability to classify a display window content as a Host, Guest or All in version 1.3 build 36, it therefore introduces some changes.

Assumming you are the host, you put up a couple of screens to run on a single computer. You setup a Search Group in your project (ntb file), in it's Project Information, you defined an address. This becomes the Host adddress, therefore any subsequent project files are setup to target this address will all be considered as branches, clients or anonymouses to this "Host".

This group are now classify as the "Hosting" or "Host" content, the rest are considered as "Guest". So, they becomes a permanent group of files to be displayed for every scheduling cycle.

Some restriction:

A Primary display which is the main display area where you host your subscribers must be configured as a "Guest" content.
A "Host" only content not only specify that it can only contains the "Host" group, the display area are also out of bound to any of it's subscribers display area.
A display content of "All" indicates it can contain both the "Host" and "Guest" subscribers, in this case, the "Guest" takes priority to display first.

In a typical scenario, to use the this feature, you should have 2 or more screens. The primary screen is setup to allow your subscribers "Owners" to display freely. On your second or subsequent screens you may set the display content to "Host" or "All". When setting a display area to "Host", you forbid your subscribers to direct their content there nor allows them to encroach into that display area. When setting the display content to "All", you open this display for their content but the display area is still out of bound.