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Overview

Edit Touch Buttons

Adding Display Screens

Sale Header Format

Changing Columns

SELLmatix POS supports an unlimited number of display screens with buttons that can be touched using a touch screen, or clicked using a mouse. The only limitation to the number of screens you can use is the amount of disk space on the system and how much time you want to spend configuring the screens.

This section covers configuration of the displays. Normally this would be done only once and then you would backup the configuration and restore that configuration to other machines that need to use the same configuration.

SELLmatix Touch buttons can contain text, images and color. This makes them easily identifiable to the POS operator. When the POS is first set up, or product lines change, the touch buttons may need altering.

To modify/edit a button, right-click on the button with the mouse, or hold "CTRL" on the keyboard and touch the button. You will be presented with the following dialog:

Using this dialog, you can change the background color, font size and color, and the image used on the button. The button does not require text or images, but one or the other is necessary for identification.

The "Background" Button
When this button is clicked, a standard Windows Color Palette Dialog is displayed for you to select the background color of the button.

The "Image" Button
By clicking this button, you can select the image that SELLmatix POS will display on the button face. You can select "EMF" (Enhanced Meta Files) or BMP (Bitmap) files only. Other image types will NOT display.

SELLmatix POS comes with a set of "ready to use" images for buttons. These can be found in the program's installation directory under "Images".

When an image is displayed on a touch button, it is stretched to fill the entire surface of the button. If you have more buttons across than down, then the image will generally appear "squished" horizontally. Any text on the button will appear over the top of the image.

"Use Image"
If an image has been previously selected, you can uncheck this box to remove the image from the button.

The "Font" Button
When this button is clicked, a standard Windows Font Dialog will display for you to select the font, color, style and size of the text. Selecting a color in contrast to the background color will stop the text blending into the background. You may need to experiment with Font settings on buttons.

"Text Line 1" and "Text Line 2"
SELLmatix POS can display up to two lines of text on a button. Each line can be positioned at different locations on the button. See below for more details.

"Text 1 Vert" and "Text 2 Vert"
You can display the two lines of text at the following vertical locations on the button:-

• Top - The line will be displayed at the very top of the button.
• One Third - The line will appear one third of the way down the button.
• Middle - The line will be displayed in the center of the button.
• Two Thirds - The line will be displayed two thirds of the way down the button.
• Bottom- The line will be displayed at the bottom of the button.

Extend Right
If you want the button to be extended to the right, then enter the number of buttons to the right that you wish to have this button extended. The buttons which are covered will not be visible, however they will still exist.

Extend Down
If you want the button to be extended downwards, then enter the number of buttons downward that you wish to have this button extended. The buttons which are covered will not be visible, however they will still exist.

The "Copy Settings" and "Paste Settings" Buttons
You can "copy" the settings from one button and "paste" them to another. This process works in a similar fashion the clipboard copy and paste operations in Windows.

All button settings, except Text Lines and Input Events, are pasted to a button when the "Paste Settings" button is clicked. If settings have not been previously copied, then no settings will be applied.

The "Input Data" Button
Information on editing input data is available here.

SELLmatix POS uses a separate file to store each screen configuration. These files conform to a naming convention of "ScreenX.cfg" where "X" is the screen number. These files are stored in the directory where the SELLmatix POS data files are stored.

The first screen that is displayed when SELLmatix POS first runs, is always Screen0. You can see which screen is currently displayed at the bottom right of the SELLmatix Display as follows:-

This shows that this terminal is running at Price level Zero, and the active display screen is Screen4 and thus this screen configuration is stored in the file Screen4.cfg

These screen configuration files are ordinary text files which can be edited in a text editor such as Notepad. The format of these files is similar to the following:-

In theory, you could edit these screen files by hand, or create them from scratch. In practice however, it is normally easier to copy a similar screen to a new screen number that you wish to create, and then use the button editing features built into SELLmatix POS to make the changes you want.

There are however, a couple of features which you may find useful to edit by hand. One of these is the

Size=X,Y

entry which specifies the number of buttons across and down on the display screen. If you wish to change the number of buttons on the screen, this is the entry to change.

After the Size=X,Y entry, are a series of lines of the form:-
TB99=data

where "99" represents a button number, and "data" contains the configuration for that button.

The "data" is written out by the inbuilt Button Editing Tool, and contains a number of fields separated by commas. Many sample screen definition files contain a comment explaining what these fields are, and you could manually edit this data. Since the Button Definition tool was developed, however nobody at himatix.com has done so, and we don't see any reason why you would wish to.

Button "0" starts at the top left of the screen, and the button numbers increase across the screen until the number of buttons across is reached, and then down to the next line. Changing the number of buttons across a screen will cause the button numbers to "wrap" at a different point so that the columns in which the buttons appear will change after the first line.

Tip
If you want to have a number of screens which have an area with the same buttons in the same place you can create one screen using the built in editing functions in SELLmatix POS, and then copy these buttons into the other Screen.cfg files. This can save a huge amount of time in configuring configurations with multiple screens.

Warnings
SELLmatix POS does not care about the order in which the button entries appear in the screen.cfg file. Having button 211 appear early in the file and button 2 near the end is equally valid to having the buttons appear in numerical order.

If you are manually editing the screen.cfg files however, and copying sections of the file between different screens, this can be confusing, so most of the samples do have the buttons listed in numerical order.

• If, in the process of copying and pasting button definitions between screen.cfg files, you duplicate a button definition, then the first button definition will be used, and subsequent definitions in the same screen.cfg file will be ignored. If you paste definitions to a Screen.cfg file and the change does not appear on the display, then it is likely that there is a previous button definition in the file.

• If a Screen.cfg file does not contain a definition for a button which fits within the screen dimensions, then that button will appear as "Undefined". You will be able to create a definition for that button using the inbuilt button definition tools. However, this definition will appear at the end of the screen.cfg file, and the buttons in the definition file will not be resorted into sequence.

  If the button does have a definition, however, that is in numeric sequence, then the screen.cfg file will remain in sequence.

• The inbuilt button definition tool rewrites the entire Screen.cfg file every time that it is used and a definition saved by clicking the OK button. If you use the button definition tool while editing the Screen.cfg file with a text editor, then you should save changes in the text editor before using the button definition tool, and reload the Screen.cfg file into the text editor after the button definition tool has been used. Otherwise changes will be lost.

• Screen.cfg files must be saved with Unicode encoding. If using Notepad as a text editor, then the bottom of the "Save As" dialog should appear something as follows:-
  

Terrible things will happen if you use any other encoding method, such as ANSI or "Unicode Big Endian".

The format of the Sale Header is controlled by entries in the [Display] Section of the configuration file, "SELLmatix POS.cfg" as follows:-

The entries in this section are as follows:-

Type= Must always be set to "W".

Input= Always set to "0" (zero).

Output= Always set to "2".

HeaderFont= Font for text displayed in header with 6 parameters separated by commas, being:-

• Font Name
• Point Size
• Escapement/Orientation in tenths o0f a degree. (rotation angle)
• Boldness scale from 0 (very light) to 1000 (very heavy)
• Italics 0=off, 1=on
• Underline 0=off, 1=on

NumberOfHeaders=Number of "HeaderData=" entries that follow. Note that after the first "HeaderData=" entry, a number is appended for each line up "NumberOfHeaders - 1".

HeaderDataN= Information about the data to be displayed with parameters as follows:-

Information displayed in the header area, can be either literal "T"ext specified in this section which does not change, or "O"output variables that contain information about the sale and change according to how the sale is processed.

The format of these lines is of the format:-

HeaderDataN=Type,Data,X1,Y1,X2,Y2

where

• N = the output line number
• Type = the type of information displayed which can be:-
  • "O" (not zero) if this line displays an "O"utput Variable or,
  • "T" if this line displays literal text that does not change.
• Data = depends on the entry for "type" above where if
  
  • Type = "O" the data is one of the Output Variable names in the table below.
  • Type = "T" the data is the literal text to be displayed.
• "X1" the starting coordinate in the X-axis (across) where the data begins to display. This is expressed as a percentage of the width of the Sale Header Window.
• "Y1" is the starting coordinate in the Y-axis (down) where the data begins to display. This is expressed as a percentage of the height of the Sale Header Window.
• "X2" is the ending coordinate on the X-axis (across) of the end of the area to display the data. This is expressed as a percentage of the width of the Sale Header Window. This applies only to "O"utput Fields. The width of "T"ext fields depends on the length of the text.
• "Y2" is the ending coordinate on the Y-axis (down) of the end of the area to display the data. This is expressed as a percentage of the height of the Sale Header Window. This applies only to "O"utput Fields. The height of "T"ext fields depends on the height of the font.

For example, a line in this section such as:-
HeaderData1=O,LOCATION,30,2,48,32

would display the data in the output variable "LOCATION", starting 30% of the width of this window from the left, and 2% of this height of this window down from the top.

The end of the area where this variable can be displayed would be 48% of the width of this window and 32% of the height of the window.

You should be careful when specifying the X and Y coordinates to avoid a situation where one line of output overwrites another. It is good practice to leave a small gap of 1-2% of the display area between the edges of the window and other fields, and to select a font which will display the data within the areas specified. This is very much a case of trial and error until you come up with something that is visually appealing and displays what you need.

The table below shows valid FieldNames which can be used where the "Type" is set to "O"utput:-

Field Name	Description
LOCATION	Location Number for the order. This is normally used in a Restaurant or Bar environment when running Accounts for the table or Bar Location for the customers.
COMMENT	The comment entered into the sale header.
COVERS	The number of guests at the table. This is often used in a restaurant environment, but rarely used elsewhere.
ORDER NO	The order number supplied by the customer, to be quoted on invoices/statements.
CLERK NAME	Name of the Clerk Processing the sale. Rarely useful.
CUST NO	Customer Account Number if this is a charge sale.
CUST NAME	Customer Name.
ADDRESS 1	First Line of Customer Address.
ADDRESS 2	Second Line of Customer Address.
ADDRESS 3	Third Line of Customer Address.
ADDRESS 4	Fourth Line of Customer Address.
DATE	Date of the Sale
TIME	Time the sale started.
TOTAL	Total value of the sale.
BALANCE	Balance remaining to be paid on the sale.

The columns in the sale display are configured by entries in the [Display] Section of the configuration file, "SELLmatix POS.cfg". Normally these appear below the sale header configuration lines in the display section, and an example is as follows:-

Note that the [Display] section name in this screenshot has scrolled out of view.

The number of columns displayed is automatically calculated from the number of entries in the ColumnHeaders, ColumnWidths and ColumnAlign entries. If you wish to have 3 columns, for example, then you should have 3 fields in each of these entries, separated by commas.

The entries in this section are as follows:-

ColumnHeaders=contains the headings that appear at the top of the columns, with each column separated by a comma.

ColumnWidths=contains the number representing the width of each column, with each column separated by a comma. The units used are added to calculate the total number of units, and in the example the total number of units is 120. In this example the first column is 10/120 th of the total width available. Note that the total width of the column display is reduced by the with of a vertical Scroll Bar, however, the scroll bar only appears when necessary.

ColumnAlign=contains the alignment flags for each of the columns, with each column separated by a comma. Valid Values are "L"eft, "C"enter, and "R"ight.

Clear Receipt=must always be set to "C".

NewSale=must always be set to "C".

SaleHeader=must always be set to "H".

Sale PLU=
Sale Memo=
Adjustment=
Payment=
Payment Change=
entries should all contain the names of fields that are to be displayed in the columns of the display, separated by commas.

The first field must always be an "L".

If no data is to be displayed in a column, such as in the "Sale Memo=" entry in the example, then this should be indicated by leaving the field name blank and inserting a comma. In this example, the first and second column for a memo would contain nothing, and the Description would contain the %DESC% field.

The Field names that can be used are as follows. These fieldnames must have a leading and trailing "%" character.

The FieldNames which can be used is the columns are the same as the fieldnames in the Line Dataset Variables used in other POS output. For a list of Line Dataset Variables, Click Here

Line Display Fonts & Colors
For Finalisations, Memos and Cancellations, you can specify the Font and Color used to display these lines so they stand out and provide a visual cue to the operator. Other lines are displayed in the system default font for ListView (Grid) Controls.

Please note that the ListView Control used to display transaction lines is a built in Windows component, which clips the text to make it fit inside the space available for the line. It is very easy to specify a font size that is too big, and in this case it is clipped so that only part of the characters appear. You can specify a 36 point font if you want, but in that case you may only be able to see the dot's on the "i"'s and the crosses on the "t"'s.

The Fonts used for Finalisations, Memos and Cancellations are specified by FinFont=, MemoFont= and CanFont= entries respectively.

Following the = are 6 parameters separated by commas, being:-

• Font Name
• Point Size
• Escapement/Orientation in tenths of a degree. (rotation angle)
• Boldness scale from 0 (very light) to 1000 (very heavy)
• Italics 0=off, 1=on
• Underline 0=off, 1=on

The Color used to display Finalisations, Memos and Cancellations are specified by FinColor=, MemoColor= and CanColor= entries respectively.

Following the = are 3 numeric values in the range for 0 (zero) to 255. These numbers represent a RGB color reference where the first represents the Red component, the second the Green component and the third the Blue component. Most graphics programs such as PaintShop Pro, or PhotoShop also reference colors in the same way, and the same values used in these programs will yield the same results here.

For example, the entry:-
MemoColor=0,0,0
will cause Memo lines to be displayed in black (the default),
CanColor=255,0,0
will cause cancellations to be displayed in bright Red, and
FinColor=128,128,128
will cause finalisations to be displayed in grey.