15 | Tablet XXHighEnd Settings

[PeterSt]

New text to be added here.


Edit May 31, 2015 : The below is mostly obsolete.

Most pictures in here are a 1:1 representation of an 8" Tablet of 1024x768 when viewed on a 1280x1024 monitor.

Quickly start your XXHighEnd session on the tablet

Notice that this should be after the General section below, but for those who kind of know what to do anywhere, here are some tips to have all set within seconds :

• From the pre-work you performed (also see the General section below) you determined the measures of XXHighEnd which work best for you. This means the Scaling Factor to apply and the width and height of the XXHighEnd screen. It also incorporates the two splitbar positions;
  You saved those in a User Preset while you dragged the XXHighEnd screen to the top left of the monitor's screen.
  Do notice that from practice follows that determining these settings and saving them, will have been done earlier on a Remote Session. It is not important to understand this, but doing it that way it is practice, while doing it on the Audio PC itself is theory only and things won't fit later. You will see ...
  
  
  
  
  See the [ U ] button and further the [ 3 ] button where in this case the Preset is saved under.
  
  
• You fire up your Remote Session on the intermediate PC/Laptop. On the source Audio PC nothing needs to be done. So, when you just rebooted, just leave it alone. The monitor can stay off.
  
  
• On the remote PC startup XXHighEnd;
  Click the Preset concerned in case the XXHighEnd screen has other sizes from another session (like from on the Audio PC);
  Once you clicked the Preset to get back the Tablet's positions most of the work has been done.
  
  
• Start up the On Screen Keyboard; when you did this the last time on the remote PC, its position and size will be the same as before. Still it is to be noted that you must anticipate on dragging it veryically to the right position, which is related to the (assumed) different screen sizes (resolution) between Audio PC and Remote PC. You will see what we mean automatically.
  Anyway, take notice of where you need to position the OSK from experience. This can be right under the End After Track button, for example. But it is a position you must make yourself familar with, unless it comes up at the same position as where you lastly left it (in a previous remote session).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Notice that the most convenient positin of the OSK will be under the WallPaper Coverart but above the OSD Text at the bottom. The positioning of the WallPaper was made for this but it also depends on your Height setting of the WallPaper Coverart in the XXHighEnd settings.
  
  
• Done ? then you can now start Playback. Unattended is assumed. Keep in mind : when all is set in the Preset you don't need to do a thing further. It *must* be all right.
  
  
• Switch on the Tablet and fire up your Remote session there. If you have done all right, you will see that XXHighEnd is somewhat too large. What you will see (because you started Playback already) is the WallPaper Coverart. This is convenient because it has a left border which matches the phycisal monitor's left edge (on the Audio PC and on the Remote PC) and further - OSD Text set to be shown assumed !) it has top and bottom borders denoted by the Album title at the top and the Track Titel at the bottom. Simply squeeze the screen on the tablet so top and bottom fit exactly and in the mean time drag the screen to the left edge.
  
  
• Done ? then also assumed that the Height of the WallPaper Coverart is set so that nothing much disappears at the right side of the tablet's screen now (and otherwise your preparation was not right), fix your screen on the Tablet so it can't be dragged anymore. Notice that it is the advice to seek an "RDC Program" that allows for this, which e.g. TeamViewer can NOTdo on Android.
  
  
• When you didn't do it already, extend your OSK so that the Shortcut keys show horizontally, and that's it.
  
  

With some experience, the above procedure is performed in maybe 20 seconds. These 20 seconds are needed each time you want to start a remote session on the Tablet.


General

There are a few settings in XXHighEnd to take into consideration for well-working Tablet operation :

First off, there is the Scaling Factor. Target this to around 2.8 and you will be in the good direction.

Next there's the three panels to slide to convenient sizes;
The left one should be as small as possible, but still show the Volume Slider; if you are not using that, then this is not necessary of course. However, there's also the Coverart in the left pane you might want to see. The size of this is up to you, but notice it will go at the cost of the middle pane, hence the tracks to play and the Library Area.

What you will be in lack of the most is height. So, keep this in mind, and don't format the XXHighEnd form less tall than necessary.

The right pane, meant to show all the Coverart available with the active album, is not necessary at all. So, make this as small as possible.

The Library Area (middle pane) is the most important, because there you will be selecting your albums. It is the trick here to conveniently see which albums are there to choose from, and this is related to the combobox at the bottom, which by default says "Text Under". Choose here "One line/Group" now, and you will notice that the Album Title etc. will be quite conveniently readable ithout further tricks. This allows one album per row only, but it is more convenient than 2 or 3 without being able to read the text otherwise than holding your finger on the album so the Title pops up in a ToolTip.

The size of the Coverart in the middle pane should be chosen so that you can a. conveniently see which album it is about and b. you can scroll a few at a time. So, obviously making the Coverart so large that only one fits in the middle pane makes it highly visible, but scrolling will go one by one and will be tedious. But, all up to you, if you only recognize the possibilities.

Where it is your aim to make all as large as possible (so your fingers can easily tap the buttons etc.), it is easy to make the mistake to cut off so much of the right side that the Clear and Load buttons are not in sight anymore. But you need those ! So, leave those in side, and notice that when they are half visibe only, it is enough to conveniently tap them.

Lastly, at tuning in things, you must ensure yourself that the X button at the top right of XXHighEnd is visible on the Tablet. So, it is quite easy to in there drag all so that the height fits, but that a right part is cut off outside the Tablet's screen. Now you will have cut the X button as well, but you will need that ! (see at the mousepointer below)

(with different picture settings inside)

Here are some general guidelines that may help you to quickly "calibrate" the lot :

• Keep in mind that at multi-finger resizing the screen on the tablet the Aspect Ratio won't change. For the source PC this means that you should set the height *and* the width of the XXHighEnd screen as well-matched to the tablet as possible.
  
  
• Keep in mind that the more you must resize on the tablet, the less sharp things may start to look. Also, resizing to smaller is always better than resizing to larger.
  
  
• It is important to understand that it is not the XXHighEnd "form" which is involved; although it may look that you are only resizing the XXHighEnd form, what really happens is that you resize the whole source PC's desktop. This becomes apparent (and important) when you see the WallPaper Covberart. So, this resizes just the same.
  
  
• For the latter reason, the final calibration is always done by looking at the WallPaper Coverart. That is, if you use that (but of course you do). Thus, start an Unattended session of XXHighEnd with the OSD WallPaper switched on, and now concentrate on the top and bottom OSD texts. They must just fit the top part of the tablet's screen, as well as the bottom part. Also, the texts should start at the left edge, which is what the WallPaper does as well (this is why you must align XXHighEnd at the left edge of the source PC just the same).
  
  
• The right edge of XXHighEnd is theoretically determined from the right edge of the WallPaper Coverart. Notice though that not all Coverart will be exactly as wide, which is for yourself to judge, and obviously depends on your own applied scan sizes. Now, when the right edge of XXHighEnd is too much to the left, you will be working with an unnessary narrow XXHighEnd screen, *or* ar dragging it larger, you will look at cut Coverart at the right side.
  
  
• For efficient operation, you (at the source PC) can always drag the right edge of the XXHighEnd form so much to the left that half of the Clear and Load buttons stay visible.
  
  
  
  
  Don't forget to set the [ 2 ] splitter appropriately.
  
  
• The [ 1 ] splitter can be set as much to the left as you like, with the notice that you may want to keep the Minimized OS button in sight - but of course when you need it you can always later slide the splitter to the right a little.
  Similar counts for the Volume sider; when you don't use the Digital Volume, splitter [ 1 ] can just as well be at the left side of the Volume slider.
  
  
• Although it will become obvious to you automatically, keep in mind that all is about creating yourself the largest middle pane. This is for when you invoke the Library Area, to conveniently choose your next album to play.
  Now, how the Library Area shows the pictures is - so some extend - highly customizable. Concentrate on the two sliders visible at the bottom when the Library Area is active, and experiment with the upright slider. So, where the horizontal slider depicts the size of the Coverart pictures, this vertical slider depcits the space taken for them. Two elementary rules apply here :
  1. The less space is allocated, the more pictures you can see;
  2. ... the less space will be there for the album title in text.
  And this with the notice that the allocated space can be smaller than the pictures are, so they can overlap (in their width).
  
  
  
  
  An additional warning : Although all has been setup such that when no titles are visible as you see in the picture above - and that ToolTips will show the titel at hovering and which you can easily see on a normal PC, that hovering is not properly supported on at least an Android tablet (but untested - iPad will work out the same). This, while tapping a picture once, may show that tooltip. Mind you - *may*. Don't fall into this pitfall, because it has to be assumed that it doesn't work. Thus, setup the lot while thinking this works nicely and depend on it, and you may have wasted your time because in the end you want the allocated space larger, so titles will show normally.
  
  
• Related to the above, don't forget to look at the 4 different general "View" settings of the Library Area, and while "Text Under" is the default, OneLine/Column really might be your better option. Do not use "Horizontal Scroll" for Tablet operation, because horizontal scrolling is not explicitly supported there.
  
  
• When you feel that you can show the right pane on the tablet as well (for example because you can live with the [ 1 ] splitter all the way to the left), keep in mind that while everything else is workable, you must also judge the width of the Settings Area. So, when the middle pane is too small, you won't be able to reach the rightmost side of the Settings Area in the middle pane, and that can be a pain, depending on what you want to set in there. There *is* a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom in that case, but it will be too thin to operate from the tablet (without zooming).