Creating XTC Devices

1) Surface

Automatic Conversion

The Scope XTC /DP pre-release comes with a feature which simplifies the process of converting your existing surface to an XTC device surface.

Note that the conversion tool that is provided cannot handle drawers and dynamically resizable bitmaps in general. You find information on alternative approaches to GUI-design in the chapter restrictions.
In order to convert the surface
  1. open the device
  2. open the device's surface
  3. navigate to the node where your surface is located in the Project Explorer and press the right mouse button
  4. select 'tools' -> 'Convert Surface (make XTC compatible)'
After checking your device continue with the adaptation of the parameters. If you encountered any problems please refer to the next chapter.

Custom Conversion

In order to convert your devices by hand we recommend that you read the chapter using Scope /DP beforehand. Here you will find all necessary information concerning the changes in surface design.
  1. Move a new SurfaceInterface from the XTC Special folder into the top level of your device.
  2. Move a DefaultPanel from the XTC Special folder into the top level of your device.
  3. Connect the show pads of the SurfaceInterface and the DefaultSurface
  4. Connect the Val pad of the @CloseSurface module with the AddShow pad of the SurfaceInterface. In order to do this open the Project Explorer and select the @CloseSurface module (YourDevice->DefaultPanel->CloseGroup). Open the Pad List select the Val pad and press 'Store'. Now select the SurfaceInterface, select the AddShow pad in the Pad List and press 'Connect'.
  5. In the module list of the Project Explorer right click your old surface and select 'Swap ViewID Circuit->Surface' in the 'Tools' submenu. This switches the ViewID of all GOs included in that tree to 'Surface'.
  6. Navigate to the root of your old surface in the Project Explorer, open the GO-window and move your old surface group via Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V into the new DefaultSurface.
  7. Using the module tree in the Project Explorer move all elements from your old surface into the new DefaultSurface.

Restrictions

Directly related to XTC is the restriction that you should no longer use dynamically resizable surfaces as the hosts (the audio sequencers) are not able to deal with these phenomena. Practically this means that drawers at the edges of your device's surface cannot be used as intended. Instead you might want to use 'pages' like they are used with the Masterverbs or the Poison. (The buttons for the pages are marked red.)



For a tutorial how to implement pages please follow this link.

Alternatively you could use a multipanel surface that is managed from one main panel. The Volkszämpler would be an example for such a surface construction.

We would like to point out that there are currently significant problems for using devices with multipanel surfaces on Apple Macintosh computers in XTC mode. At the moment we cannot make any precise statement if these problems will be solved. We would recommend to use pages instead of multiple panels.


For a tutorial how to convert and build devices with a multipanel surface please follow this link.

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