3.16.2.5 Configuring a Tabbed View Client

Configuring a Tabbed View user interface is mainly a job of planning and organization. The layout of navigation bar buttons and VLC screens ist defined in a configuration file, but before editing this file some preparation have to be done:

1. Define, which views / tabs shall be present in the Tabbed View Client
2. For each tab define which VLC screens shall be contained. Edit the screens using the sat-nms Screen Editor Window .
3. Edit the Tabbed View configuration file to put things together.

The NMS directory tree provides an own subdirectory named "tviews", containing the configuration files for the Tabbed View Client. The file called "default" is used by the client, unless the client is forced to read another file (that's a command line option of the client program)

Configuration file format

The configuration file is a free form text file defining the tab layout with a couple of keywords. In the file, whitespace and C/C++ style comments are ignored. Syntax and keywords are best explained using this example:

// example tabbed view definition file
//

SHOW-FAULTICON NO
SUPPRESS-OFFLINE-FAULTS YES
SPACING 3

BUTTON "TAB 1"

    SCREEN vlc0001 vlc0001_rx_Tabscreen
    SCREEN vlc0002 vlc0002_rx_Tabscreen
    SCREEN vlc0003 vlc0003_rx_Tabscreen
    GROUP G1

GAP

BUTTON "TAB 2"

    SCREEN vlc0003 vlc0003_tx
    SCREEN vlc0002 vlc0002_tx
    SCREEN vlc0001 vlc0001_tx

DEFAULTS

    USER u1 "TAB 2"

The file starts with two global definitions:

• SHOW-FAULTICON --- Must be followed by YES or NO. Defines if the main toolbar shall include a system wide "new fault" indicator. Depending on the type of usage of the equipment managed by the NMS, the system wide fault indicator may be red all the time, irritating the operators. In this case you may want to suppress the indicator by specifying "SHOW-FAULTICON NO". If you omit the SHOW-FAULTICON definition, the Tabbed View Client shows the fault indicator.
• SUPPRESS-OFFLINE-FAULTS --- Must be followed by YES or NO. Defines if faults of an off-line VLC are signalled with a red lamp in the Tabbed View's navigation bar:
  • With NO, an off-line VLC is shown with a red lamp if the VLC signalled a fault when it was on-line the last time.
  • With YES, of-line VLCs always are shown with s gray lamp.

Default is NO, without the SUPPRESS-OFFLINE-FAULTS definition the software shows off-line VLCs with a red lamp if there is a faul known for the VLC.

• SPACING --- Must be followed by a number in the range 1..100. The SPACING value defines the room in pixels, the program reserves above and below each button. Hence, the space between two buttons is two times this value. The default for SPACING is 10 pixels.

The sequence of these definitions doesn't matter, however they should appear before the first BUTTON definition.

The BUTTON keyword defines a button in the navigation bar. It must be followed by the button label, enclosed in double quotes. Buttons are identified by their label, hence button labels should be unique within a Tabbed View definition.

The BUTTON definition also starts the definition of the tab / view assigned to this button. Within the tab definition, the following definitions are expected:

• GROUP group-name --- The GROUP definition is optional and may appear only once. Specifying a group for a button restricts the access to this tab to users being part of the specified user group. Omitting the GROUP definition for a button lets all (loggen in) users access this tab.
• SCREEN vlc-id screen-name --- The SCREEN clause defines one VLC screen appearing in the tab. The keyword SCREEN must be followed by the ID of the VLC to connect to (using the notation vlc####) and the name of the screen definition to display. The screen definition file is expected in the 'screens' directory, the file name must not contain any whitespace.There may be multiple SCREEN definitions for one tab, the screens are layed out one below each other in the order they appear in the configuration file. The number of screens actually is not limited, but it makes no sense to define more screens than fitting into the fullscreen application window. There are no scrollbars provided to manage a virtual screen larger than the physical screen size.

In the sequence of BUTTON definitions the keywords GAP and LINE may be used instead of a button clause. As GAP suggests, this tells the software to place a gap (10 pixels height) between two buttons in the navigation bar. LINE draws a horizontal line to separate buttons.

The BUTTON definitions optionally may be followed by a list of default screen assignments, preceded by the keyword DEFAULTS. Each default screen definition consists of the keyword USER, folled by a user name and the label of a button defined above. The button label must be enclosed in double quotes.

Defining a default tab for a certain user means to tell the software that this tab shall be opened automatically when the user logs on. For each user only one default tab may be defined. Together with the autologin feature available as command line option when the Tabbed View gets invoked, the program may configured to show one tab automatically when started.