Author Topic: Receipts  (Read 18199 times)

dc_rocker

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Receipts
« on: September 18, 2007, 03:09:16 PM »
Hello Corey and everybody.

I run two regular monthly tournaments and one of them has averaged 150 to 170 players. It has become unpractical to have all the 150+ players to stop on the screen projection, search for their names on the table diagram and then go out looking where table 13 is. Also, to designate a seat on the moment they buyin also makes the process way too long. Adding a player, buying in and then seating him.

I was wondering if there's any way we could work out a solution for something like they do in Vegas and the WSOP. Almost every casino in Vegas use the QueueOS tournament system that prints this receipt:



Look how much information there is and most importantly: Table and seat #.

I know there's the problem of the software not knowing how many people/tables there will be before hand, but I'm willing to work with you, Corey, and find a solution. I think with the addition of a professional receipt system (and if ever possible the multi-screen feature) your software will be nothing short of perfect.

On a side-note, people on the 2+2 forum all consider the QueueOS system to be really simple, in their words, a piece of sh**, and they all recommend TD, as I do.

Hope we can work it out.

Best regards,

DC

Corey Cooper

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2007, 03:49:29 PM »
Much of this can be done today, since you can turn on receipt printing on the Preferences tab.  Items that aren't already provided can easily be added (although I can't think of anything other than Table and Seat).

There are 2 ways to go (off the top of my head) for providing table and seat number on a receipt.

(1) Provide a setting which tells the TD how many players you EXPECT, and allow it to seat players randomly within a set of tables that fits that expected number.  Or simply have a setting that says until the tournament starts, seat players randomly within the set of tables that are defined.  This sounds simple, and on the one hand it is, but there are a lot of what-ifs that also have to be taken into account.

(2) Seat players before buying them in.  Buy them in as they arrive and pay.

Both of these need the addition of printing the table and seat on the receipt, which is easy to do.  The 1st method needs additional coding to make it work, while the 2nd would work simply with adding table and seat on the receipt.

tandemrx

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2007, 08:00:16 PM »
I also like the idea of printing table and seat on receipt (although not sure when I will use it).

I like your option #1 the best.  Tell the program that this tourney will have 4 tables and then just have it select seats as people come in (or the option to pre-seat people if you know they are coming or are pre-paid).

In my case, I will usually know who is coming before the tourney - so I pre-seat people (I just buy them in well prior of the tourney).

But, I would like a better way to let them know what seat they are at.  Receipt might help, then they don't have squint at the displays to figure out which table they are at.


Corey Cooper

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2007, 10:16:24 AM »
I've been thinking about this a bit and think this is what I will do:

  • Add an option to the Players tab to Randomly seat players as they buy-in
  • If this option is checked, when a player buys-in they will be randomly seated at any available seat defined on the Tables tab; the seating algorithm is completely ignored at this point - just randomness is used
  • If no seat is available at buy-in, a dialog will be presented to ask whether or not the player(s) should be bought-in and left unseated (this gives you the option to abort the buy-in process and edit your Tables first)

Thoughts?

spade117

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2007, 10:28:46 AM »
Sounds good to me.
Spade


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tandemrx

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2007, 10:43:35 AM »
I don't know if I would use it in this manner because I don't run big tourneys, but here is a problem that I might see with this method if I was running big tourneys.

Say you set up 3 10-person tables.  You then buy people in and get 18 entrants.  So, right off the bat you are going to want to collapse to 2 full tables and seating will change from what you assigned people.

So this method would count on the director have a really good idea of how many peopl will sign up and then make sure you set up a low number of tables so that you would have to add tables if you get more than you expected.

I am often on the fence as to whether I will have 1 or 2 tables used at my tourneys.  So I guess I would just define 1 table and fill it up and if I get enough for the 2nd table I would just define that table and fill it up (assuming that those I have seated wouldn't move).

My other problem is that I have dedicated dealer players and I need to seat them first.

I see how this is a very tough problem.

But, I like your basic solution Corey and could see using the approach you are considering.

Usireland

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2007, 02:58:27 AM »
Well assuming when you have a large number of players you have more help than just yourself, you could print out receipts and then print out seating arrangements afterwards and have 3 people handing them out to players i.e. Players with Surnames A-G go to Person A, Players with Surnames F- M go to Person B, and N-Z go to Person C to receive their seating assignment.

Sure its not the ideal arrangement but it does eliminate the need to collapse tables before the game even starts.

Hope this helps
Regards
Ian

dc_rocker

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2007, 04:23:27 PM »
Hello Corey and everyone else.

I've been thinking about this a bit and think this is what I will do:

  • Add an option to the Players tab to Randomly seat players as they buy-in
  • If this option is checked, when a player buys-in they will be randomly seated at any available seat defined on the Tables tab; the seating algorithm is completely ignored at this point - just randomness is used
  • If no seat is available at buy-in, a dialog will be presented to ask whether or not the player(s) should be bought-in and left unseated (this gives you the option to abort the buy-in process and edit your Tables first)

Thoughts?


Awesome! I think this is a great idea. Nice way of implementing. On another though, I think that when the seating capacity is reached a dialog could pop up and advise you to add more tables.

Another suggestions to have a way selecting the method of payment on the receipt. Since you have the "salesperson" field I don't think it would be too hard. The thing I'm looking for is that I need to have a financial report (for my own control) of my tournament. I need to know how many people pated by credit card, in cash and in check. Is it possible?

Actually I'm using an Excel spreadsheet along with TD to control this, but again it consumes a lot of time during the buyin process to fill two separate softwares.


Say you set up 3 10-person tables.  You then buy people in and get 18 entrants.  So, right off the bat you are going to want to collapse to 2 full tables and seating will change from what you assigned people.



Tandemrx, in my tournaments we have a nice staff to help me run things. But it wouldn't be much of a problem if I have to collapse a table before starting. After all, as soon as all buy-ins are finished I can glance at the seating chart to see how things are and direct my staff to relocate the players at once. Also it would take a lot less time than having 150+ players staring at a scrolling table diagram screen looking for their names.


Thanks  for the help and I hope to help you improve this great software.

D.C.

Scotty K

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #8 on: October 08, 2007, 11:38:28 PM »
Hey Corey.

As always, GREAT work on this entire program!

I've been working on the receipts here and for the most part I am making progress.  I'm trying to do something similar to the example posted previously at the top of this thread.  My question to you is, is there a way to rotate the text in the cell 90 degrees, like it is shown on the left side in the example above?  I'm not too well-versed in HTML, so I have been following your suggestions as well as some tutoring on some websites that I have found, and I couldn't find out how to do that, if it is at all indeed possible.

This is certainly not a priority issue, so if it can't be done in an easy manner, then don't bother.  I was just wondering if there was some easy code that I could attach to the cell to make the text rotate.

Corey Cooper

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #9 on: October 09, 2007, 10:26:10 AM »
There is, they are called "filters". 

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms532972.aspx

http://thetournamentdirector.net/forums/index.php?topic=755.0

Basically, you add a style:

<td style="filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=N)">

Set N to:

0: Default. Content is not rotated.
1: Content is rotated 90 degrees.
2: Content is rotated 180 degrees.
3: Content is rotated 270 degrees.

You might have to work with it a little bit.  They don't always do exactly as you might think (as amcq10 discovered in the topic referenced above).

Scotty K

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #10 on: October 09, 2007, 03:38:34 PM »
Thanks so much for your help and prompt reply.  I'll give it a go and see how it comes out.

Scotty K

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2007, 07:45:54 PM »
OK....I've been working on this some more.  I did follow your suggestions, Corey, and I made some progress in seeing the text when I added "valign="top".  The only problem with this now was that when I did the text rotation, it expanded the cell horizontally, as if the text were going in the original direction.  Also, the text rotation was only accomplished in the viewer; when I went to Print Preview, it showed the original orientation.  So I guess I'm still not doing something correctly.  I've put this aside for now to continue to work on my receipt template, and for the most part (aside from the text rotation issue), I've got it to where I like it.

Now here's the rub:  I worked on my template file, tweaking it here and there, and finally printed it out directly from the Receipts folder, where TD sends them when they are created at buyin.  When I printed them out from the Receipts folder, I would hit the Print dialogue, and everything was fine.  Then I figured it was time to try it out directly from TD; I did a buyin, hit the Print dialogue that pops up there, but when I hit Print this time, the reciept prints out in a drastically smaller form, about one-quarter the size of the original.  I checked the printer settings, and still the same thing happens, a much smaller version of my receipt is printed.  It also changes my font from Ariel to New Times.

Here's what I did to check it out:

1.  I did another buyin; when the Print dialogue pops up, this time I went directly to the Receipts folder and opened the receipt that was sent there.  I did the print preview, checked my print settings for size and whatnot, pushed print, and all is well.  When I went back to the original Print dialogue, I checked printer settings there (everything seemed to be in place), pushed print, and the small version printed out again.

2.  I changed to receipt template to another version that I made earlier; same story.  Then I went to your default receipt template, and again the same thing.

3.  I repeated this exercise on 3 different printers; everything happens the same.

Am I doing something wrong?  Have you heard of this before, and if so, any suggestions on how to fix it?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

(P.S. I don't know of anyone else who is testing out this feature.  If you are, let me know how it's going for you.)

Corey Cooper

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #12 on: October 19, 2007, 09:45:51 AM »
The rotation trick does have some odd side effects.  The few times I have used it, I've had to tweak it in different ways to get it to render the way I intended.

That aside, there aren't that many people, to my knowledge, using the receipt feature.  I have of course tested it to make sure it works.  I haven't tested very many different template configurations, and as we are working with HTML and Internet Explorer, and possibly some of the less common features (filters), anything is possible.  Why don't you post your receipt template (or email it to me if you'd rather not make it public), and I'll see what I can find out.

Scotty K

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #13 on: October 19, 2007, 05:05:52 PM »
Thanks again for your help with this.

I've sent along two versions of my receipt templates to your support email address.

Corey Cooper

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Re: Receipts
« Reply #14 on: October 22, 2007, 12:33:17 PM »
As I mentioned before, the filters can have some odd side-effects.  It looks like using the rotation filter renders the object with its original width (before rotation), and its height after rotation.  I'm sure there's a way to make this work the way we intuitively think it should, but it would require tweaking the HTML quite a bit.  I know it *can* be done, but the time and effort I'm not sure is worth it.

I also see the same thing you are seeing, that the filter works on-screen but appears to be ignored for printing.  I have no idea why this is.  I have come across nothing in Microsoft's documentation that would explain this.  Furthermore, rotating the text causes it to render in bold.  Again, no idea why.

Since you are rotating text to flow down the screen/page, there is a built-in style that can do this for you.  Instead of using a filter, use the style "writing-mode: tb-rl".  This renders correctly and prints correctly (at least the print preview looks right).

As far as why your receipts are printing smaller ... well, I'm afraid I don't have an answer for this.  To be honest, the software really barely has access to print anything anyway - really all it can do is call the "print" function of Internet Explorer (the same thing you can do with File -> Print in IE).  Nothing else.  As the user manual explains, if you want to change other printing configuration items, you've got to open IE and set them there - the TD doesn't even have access to those.

Hate to leave it like this, but I'm at a loss as to why it is doing this.  And I'm not sure there's anything that could be done within the TD to fix it.

If I figure out anything else, I'll post it.  Please do the same.  Sorry I can't offer more help.