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Minimise Button for Ground Frame

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Minimise Button for Ground Frame 15/12/2011 at 07:51 #25585
indian_railways_fan
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72 posts
While most of the Ground Frames in the sims are quite small and are not a bother in one corner of the sim,the west end GF in the Euston is quite large and can occupy upto 1/4[sup]th[/sup] of the screen.If the sim itself is busy and if we also want to do some shunting in the yard,it is difficult to juggle the two screens.Hence,it would be nice if the GF panels could be provided with a minimise button.If that is not possible,or as an alternate solution,it would be even better if each GF location has a small dedicated button for launching the GF.

Another suggestion I want to make is that the telephone symbol on the top be provided with a number indicator to show the number of calls pending.That is because,sometimes if we are about to clear the signal to a train,it may be ok to ignore the call.But in the absence of a way to check the number of calls pending,there is no option but to repeatedly open the F6 panel to verify that no new calls have arrived in the meantime.Also,in case there are several calls pending in the F6,would it be possible to highlight the telephone symbol in a different color to indicate the arrival of another call since the last time the call list was checked.

Khalid.

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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 15/12/2011 at 10:04 #25590
kbarber
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1712 posts
Couple of nice ideas I'd support. Another possibility (don't know quite how easy it'd be) would be to have separate phone symbols for signal post telephones & others... beginnings of an authentic concentrator?
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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 15/12/2011 at 16:29 #25601
Lardybiker
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771 posts
Both good suggestions.....I'll add the appropriate enhancements to the SimSig bug tracking system
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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 15/12/2011 at 18:23 #25605
jc92
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3629 posts
i agree with both these suggestions

even small ground frame windows can block parts of the screen you may need to see, especially when playing solo, often the answer is to set them, close the window, then reopen it and replace the frame after use, not always the most user freindly/ practical way, compared to minimising and maximising.

equally with the idea for telephones, priority can definetely be rated in regards of SPTs first, aswell as real boxes having concentrators and several physical phones.

"We don't stop camborne wednesdays"
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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 15/12/2011 at 19:51 #25608
ledgero2
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93 posts
with the telephones, you dont really get that many calls though, so would it be of little gain. and with the minimise button, on larger GFs yes perhaps it would be useful, but smaller ones can usually be moved out of the way. shrug.
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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 15/12/2011 at 20:00 #25610
jc92
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3629 posts
" said:
with the telephones, you dont really get that many calls though, so would it be of little gain.
dependent on what panel/sim you are playing and dependent on conditions? (failures, delays, single line working, diversions). i can imagine a fair few phonecalls coming in on euston or immingham where failures are causing a few problems.

"We don't stop camborne wednesdays"
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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 15/12/2011 at 20:20 #25612
Stephen Fulcher
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2026 posts
Anyone who has worked Saltley single-handed will know that a lot of phones ring at the same time.

I cannot see why anyone would be against this idea.

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The following users said thank you: headshot119, officer dibble
Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 16/12/2011 at 02:50 #25631
UKTrainMan
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1803 posts
Regarding minimising the ground frame window - surely if you show all windows on taskbar (via F3 Options) it should also create an item there for the ground frame window?

edited to add

OK, it doesn't work like that. But then it occurred to me that if you were struggling with available screen space you could still turn the above on and minimize one of the three windows to deal with the ground frame window. Or alternatively just leave the settings as is and move the ground frame window around as desired.



Regarding telephone calls, I'm not totally against the idea, but I do wonder if it really is needed. In my case, if I'm about to clear a signal or it is about to clear of it's own accord, I will sometimes just ignore the call and only answer it if it's still ringing after the signal has cleared or I'd press A to answer it and if it is the train in question I would close the window by clicking on the X button which would place the call back into the queue for calls to answer. Sometimes, I may just select wait 2 minutes, but if I'm on a busy workstation or operating the whole thing (as I currently am with a certain [very good!] Bristol timetable) then I may find I haven't got the time to even do that. There may also be the fact that at some signalboxes' they may not have an indication of how many calls they have waiting, so surely it shouldn't suddenly turn up in SimSig.

All that said though, I would still give this idea a chance if it is implemented. Who knows, I may actually like it.

Any views and / or opinions expressed by myself are from me personally and do not represent those of any company I either work for or am a consultant for.
Last edited: 16/12/2011 at 02:55 by UKTrainMan
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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 16/12/2011 at 04:03 #25639
BarryM
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2158 posts
With the latest sims these days, I find it much better to run with 2 monitors. Layout on one screen, all the other 'bits' on the other.

Barry

Barry, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 16/12/2011 at 09:32 #25647
Late Turn
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696 posts
" said:
There may also be the fact that at some signalboxes' they may not have an indication of how many calls they have waiting, so surely it shouldn't suddenly turn up in SimSig.

Most signal boxes have an indication of individual incoming calls on the concentrator (or VDU equivalent), so it wouldn't be unrealistic to show how many calls are waiting as a compromise (as it's clearly unrealistic to expect the whole concentrator, or the telephone interface which is a simplified representation in Simsig, to be visible all the time!).

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Re: Minimise Button for Ground Frame 16/12/2011 at 13:33 #25652
mfcooper
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707 posts
On my old concentrator (Stratford NLL) the concentrator was a separate thing to our outside line phones. The concentrator would light up for all SPTs, Fringe Boxes, etc when they rang in; the CSR was a separate unit displaying any trains phoning in; the outside lines (we had 2 outside phones) could also both ring; and the fringe to the Brimsdown workstation at Liverpool St IECC was a separate phone again! So that's 5 different handsets to answer!

At Victoria, We have 1 phone system for our outside line and concentrator, and calls from anywhere queue up on our touch-screen system (and yes, outside calls can also queue). The CSR is still a separate unit and also shows queuing calls. And GSM-R equipment has been installed (but not yet in use) on the panels and is yet another separate thing (no idea how call queuing works for that, yet).

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