Viz-Ability

Viz-Ability^� is a library of objects and components written in C# .NET�2.0 and is designed to allow communication with Viz Engine without the need for a sophisticated understanding of the Viz communication script language. This makes Viz accessible to a wider range of programmers.

Viz-Ability^� has been written with ease of use being a primary aspect considered during the development. Consisting of drag and drop components, it directly targets applications for live sport or election coverage where data, whether scores or votes, are the only input and content management is not as important. It also eases the hardware setup as it talks directly to Viz Engine.

With Viz-Ability^� the developer can concentrate on the actual application and let the arcane management of Viz Engine be taken care of without having the in depth knowledge necessary to make the graphics work. With a drag and drop component architecture, and commands that encapsulate multiple Viz Engine script commands, a fully functioning interface to Viz Engine can be created in minutes.

If there is a particular command that is not part of the library, the raw Viz Engine script command can be sent to Viz so anything Viz Engine is capable of, can be achieved using the Viz-Ability^� library.

Features

Some features of the Viz-Ability^� library are:

Drag and drop component based development
Targets the .Net�2.0 framework for maximum compatibility
Any .Net language can be used with the library
Multiple Viz Engines can be configured to be run simultaneously
Includes the following windows to ease Viz Engine management:
- Manage the connected Viz Engines
- Drag/drop scenes to setup scene pre load so when a scene is started it is already loaded in Viz Engine
- Options to customize the entire library
- QuickDraw^TM - a simple character generator interface to create ad-hoc graphics
Includes a 4 digit key pad component which can be applied to an application's window:
- Can be used from the keypad for calling up QuickDraw^TM and other application specific graphics
- Allows hooking up custom actions based on key presses
A scene browser component to allow the selection of scenes based on their icons
A class to create DataPool variable streams to be sent to Viz, which is very simple to use
DataPool can use TCP/IP or UDP packets
Viz Engines can be split into arbitrary groups for different data handling
...plus much more

Components

The following includes some of the components that can be dragged and dropped from the toolbox in Visual Studio 2008:

Command: This is the main component that all applications will have. This component controls all communications with the Viz Engines and includes all the commands that can be executed from code to control Viz with ease.

	Admin: The Admin component looks after the setting up of all the Viz "Devices" attached to the control application. This includes the TCP/IP address of the engine/engines. Configured engines can be put "offline" so while they still exist within the admin component, no commands are sent to that particular engine.
	Scene Browser: The Scene Browser component can be used by an application to display the hierarchy of the scenes directory in the engine and includes thumbnails of the scenes. The name of the selected scene is returned to the application. The scene browser can also be used to browse other parts of the Viz database, including fonts, images, materials and objects. The scene browse uses another control in the library, ctlDBDrowser, that can be used by any application for any purpose where the tree structure of the Viz archive is required to be displayed with thumbnails of each file, be they scenes, fonts, images, materials or objects.
	QuickDraw^TM: QuickDraw^TM allows scenes to be setup as simple character generator templates. Included with the installer is a Viz plugin that can be dropped onto containers where you would like to be able to modify the contents, such as names or titles. QuickDraw^TM then uses this information to enter and store information for each graphic using these templates. The QuickDraw^TM graphics are then called up using the key pad component. QuickDraw^TM graphics can be configured to have more than one page and can be setup to change on from one graphic to the next.
	Key Pad: The Key pad component is used by QuickDraw to display graphics that have been setup in QuickDraw. It can also be used by the application for its own use such as function keys or graphics using the number in the Key Pad component itself.

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