Inspired Signage XPress Programming
18 Inspired XPress - Programming Guide
To simplify the creation of dynamic content, XPress is provided with a set of active templates that can be customized by
the user and that perform specific actions. The active templates use JavaScript for dynamic creation of SVG documents
with specific graphical layouts and up-to-date content.
In this section, we discuss a number of active templates we have developed to retrieve RSS content. We call these
templates news templates.
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and
podcasts. RSS documents are XML documents with specific structures and tags which can be retrieved from the Internet
or other network locations.
The news templates instruct the IS-SPX Player to extract from remote RSS files the “content” and apply a customizable
graphical layout which may include the text positions in the scene, the font properties, the background image and the
animation of each element of the scene.
A few examples of templates are suggested that display the text on the screen according to predefined graphical layouts.
All the templates can be found under the My Templates/ folder after XPress installation. The templates are split into two
categories: The Layout Templates and the Format Helpers.
Composing a Live News Document
To compose a live news document:
1. Copy the news template SVG file from My T e mplates/News into your project.
2. Open a new exploring tab of your current project in the browsing panel.
3. Open an additional exploring tab located in My Templates/News.
4. Drag and drop the template file you have chosen from the news tab into your current project tab.
5. Open the newly created SVG file. Select your news source using the RSS Feed Source entry. Type the URL of the
RSS news to use an external news feed.
6. Customize the display of your news source:
Press the Edit button.
Move or resize the text/media box in the preview panel as desired.
Edit the text box content. The [SPX][title] and [SPX][description] will be replaced by the content of the RSS
news.
Add news text or media boxes using the Layer tab.
The same template can also use XML, Text, CSV or iCalendar files as data source.
Layout Templates
Template Name Description
news.svg Display news from RSS, XML, Text, CSV or iCalendar in a formatted manner.
Supports single or multiple items per page.
news_ticker.svg Display news text in a scrolling banner (left/right or top/bottom).
news_crawler.svg Display formatted news using scrolling (left/right or top/bottom). Can be used to display logo/
media in a ticker or multi-line tickers.
Format Helpers
Helper Name Description
bouncing_text.svg Text too large to be displayed will 'bounce' left to right or top to bottom
fit_text.svg Text size will adapt to the area available.
date_time.svg Display a date/time in a formatted manner.
switch.svg Display different media depending on the item content.