User manual

Automation Protocol Easytext Commands
Miranda Technologies Ltd Page 234
Datasources
Datasources may be used to simplify delivery of textual information into
Easytext-equipped systems. A datasource is a named tag embedded within
the string of an Easytext box. Datasources can be created, modified or deleted
under automation control. By updating the string value of the datasource
dynamically, the string can be modified while it is on-air (either static or
scrolling).
In addition to external datasources, there are assorted internal datasources
that can be accessed by templates. These include time, date and other system
information.
Within an Easytext message, a datasource reference is encoded as follows:
|datasourcename[:option=value]|
The vertical bars delimit the datasource reference. The ‘:option=value’
section may be omitted, or may have multiple instance, adding different
options
Examples:
|TIME| could produces “11:55”
|TIME:FORMAT ”H:M:S”| might produce “11:55:01”
|TIME:FORMAT ”H:M”:OFFSET ”-1”| could produce
“10:55” (multiple options, each of which could be
omitted)
Options (for internal datasources only) are specified after a colon. The option
name is followed by a quoted value string. The interpretation of options and
their values is entirely dependent on the internal datasource.
Naturally, this means that vertical bar characters cannot be easily encoded. A
sequence of two vertical bars will generate a single vertical bar, so vertical
bars can be inserted using the sequence ‘||’
All datasource names, option names and values are case-sensitive and are
stored as Unicode values.