Relative paths
Repeat Signage allows the use of relative paths. In order to explain what they are we are going to use a postal analogy.
If you look at Repeat Software's website, our postal address is:
| 2 Glentworth Road |
| Skegness |
| Lincolnshire |
| United Kingdom |
Now we could write this as a series of levels:
| Country | Region | Town | Street | Number |
| United Kingdom | Lincolnshire | Skegness | Glentworth Road | 2 |
Now if we had a letter for someone at number 22 on the same street, we could ask someone in our office to "take this to number 22". Now this is a relative address. Because we are at number 2 and the letter is for number 22, we can just say 22 and then the letter would be taken to the right building. Now the absolute address for number 22 would be:
| Country | Region | Town | Street | Number |
| United Kingdom | Lincolnshire | Skegness | Glentworth Road | 22 |
which would be needed by someone in say America sending a letter to them. Now if we had a letter for someone on the next street, then we could say "take this to 55 Park Avenue" which again is a relative address to our address. The absolute address for 55 Park Avenue would be:
| Country | Region | Town | Street | Number |
| United Kingdom | Lincolnshire | Skegness | Park Avenue | 55 |
Now we can't say to someone "take this to number 55" as from here it would end up at 55 Glentworth Road, so we also need the street.
Now we could have a folder on our computers for each street in the UK and a Word document for each building. For example:
c:\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Glentworth Road\2.doc
c:\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Glentworth Road\22.doc
c:\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Park Avenue\55.doc
Now in computer terms we would write the relative addresses in the following way.
From 2 Glentworth to 22 Glentworth, then we would write the relative address as:
22.doc
From 2 Glentworth to 55 Park Avenue:
..\Park Avenue\55.doc
Now the above uses the ..\ notation. This means, go back a level, so we are going back from the Glentworth Road folder to the Skegness folder then back up a level to the Park Avenue folder. Relative paths are good for when the information is copied to a different place. So let's say that the United Kingdom folder was copied to another computer and put in the:
d:\Planet Earth
so our 2 Glentworth address Word document now has an absolute address of:
d:\Planet Earth\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Glentworth Road\2.doc
Now our old absolute address just don't exist anymore, so it we try to access:
c:\United Kingdom\Lincolnshire\Skegness\Glentworth Road\26.doc
then we would get a 'File not found' type message as this file has now moved. However, we can still use the same relative addresses, so if we try to access:
22.doc
then it would find the file in the same folder.
Relative paths with Repeat Signage
These are important if you are copying presentations from one machine to another and need to monitor files for changes. We recommend you create a folder for each presentation such as:
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Lunch.rsp
and then put all the files used in the same folder:
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Monday.rtf
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Tuesday.rtf
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Wednesday.rtf
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Thursday.rtf
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Friday.rtf
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Saturday.rtf
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Sunday.rtf
Now if you have a Text block control which plays the appropriate .rtf file depending on the day of the week, then when you add them to the playlist, you can use a relative address of:
Monday.rtf
rather than:
c:\Presentations\Lunch\Monday.rtf
This is good as if you use a service like Dropbox.com, then when this folder is sent to another computer, then folder may be located at somewhere like:
C:\Users\Administrator\Dropbox\RepeatSignage\Presentations\Lunch\Lunch.rsp
but because we have used relative paths, i.e. Monday.rtf rather then c:\Presentations\Lunch\Monday.rtf then the presentation will find the files it needs. When the Monday.rtf file is then edited with a new menu for Monday, then that new information will be displayed on Monday.