|
Tom L. Hall President |
|
Issue 2
January 1, 2007 |
Welcome to the second in a series of Newsletters I plan on producing to keep you updated on things you can do to become a better ToolBook Author as well as teach you some of the fundamentals of you are just starting out with ToolBook or need a refresher on something. The Newsletters will be aimed at the beginner to intermediate ToolBook Authors but from time to time, I will discuss advanced techniques. In this issue, I will focus on system books. At the end, I will provide a survey of some of the more commonly used ToolBook Resources on the Web.
In this Issue:
An Introduction to System Books
An Introduction to System Books
System books (with an *.sbk extension) are
files that live up the object hierarchy from your currently opened tbk file and
are books that provide a great deal of the functionality both while you are
Author level but also while testing and running a book at Reader level. To understand a bit about system books, it is
assumed that by now you understand a bit about the object hierarchy in
ToolBook. Just to be sure, each object
exists at a certain level in ToolBook relative to any other object, and this
includes the book as well as system books, with the system books existing at a
level higher than the currently opened book.
If we take
a look ahead at the Preview Release of Blackcomb (ToolBook Instructor 9), we
find a host of sbk files including tb90.sbk, tb90a.sbk, tb90acta.sbk,
etc. in the main ToolBook Instructor folder: C:\Program
Files\ToolBook\ToolBook Instructor.
These files are used while authoring.
For instance, the tb90acta.sbk is the authoring system
book (the “a” after “act”) that is used while you are using the Actions Editor.
Additionally,
if we look in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\ToolBook\TBSystem folder, we find
the runtime files and here you can see sbk’s such as tb90actr.sbk and tb90hyp.sbk. For instance, the tb90actr.sbk is the
runtime system book (the “r” after “act”) that is used for Actions Editor
actions when you go to Reader level or deploy your tbk natively to CD-ROM, etc.
using the Runtime files.
System
books will typically have blocks of code that are handlers. From within your currently opened ToolBook
book, you can send a message up the object hierarchy and when it reaches the
appropriate system book, the message is “handled” and the code for that handler
executes. Many times, these blocks of
code will be functions and might return information back to the book and object
that sent the message. Often, we might
send a message and forward it to make sure it goes on up the object
hierarchy.
When you
observe the menu options on the menu bar, what is displayed is a result of
having code out in one or more of those system books shown in the illustrations
above. When you make a choice, the code
that executes is code that exists in one of those system books. In the illustration below, clicking on Object displays the Object menu. Clicking Properties for Page brings up a dialog
box that actually exists out on one of those system books. From that dialog box, selections are made
that cause information to be sent back (returned) down
the line to the current book. For instance,
you can use that Page Properties dialog box to change the Name of the page that you are on in the currently opened book.
In addition to having the system books that are distributed with
ToolBook, you can create your own. Most
often, you would do this to enhance your Authoring abilities. If you deploy a Native ToolBook application
(CD-ROM, etc.), you could also have a custom system book that contains special
code you have created to do different things at Runtime. In this section, I will concentrate on how
you can add a custom system book that will help you be more efficient as an
Author.
In this exercise, we will add a new menu item to the Menu Bar, naming it MyTools and then have several selections from the MyTools drop-down menu.
- To
save time in writing a lot of OpenScript code,
click here to download a sample book script that will be
used to create the custom system book.
Clicking on this link should bring the code up in your Browser
window, and from there you should just be able to select and copy that
text to the Windows Clipboard or save the file as a txt file to your hard
drive.
- Now, open a blank ToolBook
book and save it as MyTools.sbk. The easiest think to do is to save it to
the Common Files folder which is C:\Program Files\Common
Files\Click2learn\TBSystem for ToolBook Instructor 2004.
- Use the Object, Properties for
Book command to access the Book Properties dialog box.
- Click the Script Editor icon
to open up the Script Editor for the book.
Either import the txt file in that you saved or paste the text you
copied from the Browser window you opened by clicking the link above.
This is
the first part of that script:
|
to
handle enterapplication forward ---
Start Add Menu Items. in mainwindow sysSuspend
= false remove menu "MyTools" at author sysSuspend
= true add menu "MyTools"
at author end add menuitem
"Set HTML Dir" alias "setprojdir"
to menu "MyTools" at author add menuitem
"Paste Text from Clipboard" alias "PasteText"
to menu "MyTools" at author add menuitem
"Paste Image from Clipboard" alias "PasteImage"
to menu "MyTools"
at author add menuitem
"Show All Objects on Page" alias "ShowObjects"
to menu "MyTools" at author add menuitem
"Hide Selected Object" alias "HideSelection"
to menu "MyTools" at author add menuitem
"Show Book Path" alias "showBookPath"
to menu "MyTools" at author add menuitem
"Show Number of Backgrounds in Book" alias "BgCount" to menu "MyTools"
at author add menuitem
"Compact Book" alias "compactbook"
to menu "MyTools" at author add menu "Insert pages" in
menu "MyTools" at author add menuitem
"Copy Specific Page No." alias "CopyPageNo"
to menu "Insert Pages" in menu "MyTools"
at author add menuitem
"Copy Specific Page Name" alias "CopyPageName"
to menu "Insert Pages" in menu "MyTools"
at author forward end --- End
of Add Menu Items Section. |
There are
likely many ways of doing this but this is what I have done over the years as
my Custom System Book has evolved to what it is today with many dropdown menu
items and many of those having cascade menus.
As a side note, I have a variety of pages in my system book and I use
this to organize my code since my routines make calls to those pages and the
code on those pages. This also addresses
the issue of having an upper limit to the amount of code you can have for any
object.
We will
eventually add this system book to the list of system books that load on
startup of ToolBook for any book you open.
Here you see that we forward the enterapplication handler to move this message up the object
hierarchy. To make sure that the MyTools menu
option does not already exist, I first remove it, and then make sure it is
added with the add menu “MyTools” at author line. Notice that I then start adding menuitems, the
listings from the drop-down obtained by clicking MyTools from the Menu Bar at
Author. The first one is add menuitem
"Set HTML Dir" alias "setprojdir"
to menu "MyTools" at author and causes
one drop-down item to be added: Set HTML
Dir which is aliased to be setprojdir to simplify things.
Note that
the last few lines of code starting at add
menu "Insert pages" in menu "MyTools"
at author allows us to create a cascade menu where clicking on Insert pages from the MyTools menu
will display a cascade menu with two selections: Copy Specific Page No. and Copy
Specific Page Name. Basically
cascade menus can be used to organize your options and shorten the length of
the drop-down menu.
Here is
the handler for the first option: setprojdir. As you
likely know, unless you specify something different, when you publish your tbk
file, a folder will be named Webexport and your
book will be published to that folder.
Using this code, we can redirect that export to wherever we wish, or
just put it into a folder named HTML one level below the tbk file’s
folder. Of course, you can always set
this new folder directory location manually when you start to publish the tbk
file, but the point is this: Use a Custom
Menu option for repetitive tasks or just to have a way of doing things faster.
|
to
handle setprojdir ASYMI_ProjectDir
of this book=ASYM_pathOfFile(name of this
Book)&"HTML" end |
Thus, what
eventually happens once we add this system book is that we will see a MyTools menu
like this. Clicking on Set HTML Dir from within a book causes
a message to be sent up to the Custom System Book that then causes the setprojdir
hander to be executed.
- Now, back to actually doing
this. After you have added the
script to the book, save your book again.
- We will now make sure we get
this menu option each time ToolBook is opened and you are in a book at
Author level. Click View, Options to access the Instructor Options dialog box.
- Go to the Startup tab and click the Add
button.
- Browse to the location where
you saved your file and select it as shown here. Recall it was suggested to put it in the
Common
Files/TBSystem folder.
- Now, click OK to continue as shown below.
- To see this new Menu option, you must
close ToolBook and open it again, opening a blank book or any book you
have created.
Here you
see the entire set of MyTools
menu items along with the Insert pages
cascade menu selections.
The great
part about this is that you can now add functionalities but writing new
handlers (or functions) and adding new Menu items or creating cascade
menus. Below is a view of some of what I
use from my Custom System book where I have a Menu named TCCTools. Notice that I have a great many cascade menus
just to organize things and to keep the drop-down short. In future Newsletters I will provide
additional code to allow you to continue to build your own Custom System book.
In this section, I will discuss some of the basic things I have put into
your first Custom System book.
Often, you will have a Word document or a PowerPoint file open that
contains your Storyboard text and you will select some of that text and copy it
to the Windows Clipboard. As you have
learned, especially if you have been in any of my training classes, most often
you don’t want to just paste that text into a field in your ToolBook book since
you probably have already set up your book and or templates and starters to
have an approved style which includes the format of text to be displayed in a
field. The field has the formatting and
you want the text to be pasted into that field to not be “rich”. That is, you don’t care and you don’t want
any special formatting to carry over from the Storyboard. You have an Edit, Paste Special
option from the ToolBook Menu, but then you have to choose Text (Text
Only) from a dialog box. This is three
clicks and you have to remember what to choose.
With the Paste Text from the Clipboard option from the Custom
menu, the handler shown below executes and we accomplish the same thing with
one less click and no decisions to have to make from a dialog box.
|
--- Paste unformatted text into a formatted field. to handle PasteText sysSuspend= false send
pastespecial "text" sysSuspend = true end |
Here’s another one that I find myself needing on occasions. If I am in a hurry and have a graphic in PaintShop Pro or have copied something like Clipart from
PowerPoint, then instead of using the suggested method of displaying graphics
in ToolBook (using the Reusable Graphics Placeholder or Web Graphics
Placeholder objects), I will just quickly do a copy and paste to add the image
directly to my page in ToolBook. A
bitmap will be pasted in as a bitmap using the normal Paste option. This is OK.
But if you have a gif or jpg file opened on your graphics program and you
do a normal copy and paste, you get a picture object in ToolBook which is less
desirable than a paint object, and you then might wind up having to or wanting
to convert the picture object to a paint object. Now, selecting Paste Image from Clipboard from MyTools
menu calls this handler in the Custom System book and we get what we want. Otherwise, we would have to choose Edit,
Paste Special and then choose an option from a dialog box.
|
--- Paste Clipboard graphic as a paintobject. to handle PasteImage send
pastespecial "bitmap" end |
The Copy Specific Page No. and Copy Specific Page Name
options are most important to me to make sure I do not get those stray extra
backgrounds that we sometimes get when we just do a normal Duplicate or Copy and
Paste of a selected page. Take a look at
that handler to see that I am also using the pastespecial function to
accomplish this.
|
---Copy a specific page number to handle CopyPageNo local
mypageno ask
"What is the number of the page you want to copy?" mypageno=it if mypageno<>null go
to page mypageno send
selectpage send
copy send
back local
tbversion tbversion=char 1 of sysversion&char
3 of sysversion send
pastespecial "tb"&tbversion&&"Page" end
if end |
Finally, back to copy and pasting non-rich text into
ToolBook. Your natural instinct is to do
CTRL+V which is the normal
paste. Denny Dedmore has supplied this:
|
---Use CTRL+Shift+V to
do a Pastespecial, Text Only ---CTRL+V still does a normal paste of any
formatted text. to handle authorKeyDown
Key, isCtrl, isShift if
key = keyV and isCtrl =
true and isShift = true
bs = ASYM_BlockSuspend()
send pasteSpecial "text" get ASYM_RestoreSuspend(bs) end
forward end |
Now, if you remember (instead of having to use the option
to Paste Text from Clipboard from
the MyTools
menu) to do CTRL+Shift+V,
the text Clipboard contents will be pasted as “text only”. This happens because this keystroke
combination is not recognized by ToolBook as being something to do anything
else and thus as the message goes up the object hierarchy, it stops at this
handler in the Custom System book and the code executes. As I write this, I have to admit that I have
this shortcut built in and now that I remember I have this, I will do this more
often than using the MyTools
menu option.
To summarize, investigate the code for the other handlers
and how the menu is set up and you likely will be well on your way to adding
your own. If not, sit tight in
anticipation of the next Newsletter.
Credits
- Peter
Hoyt (Command Center, Inc.) is the author of the original Compact Book
code
- Denny
Dedmore (Sumtotal Systems, Inc.) is the author
of the CTRL+Shift+V code
In Issue #1 of this Newsletter, I mentioned several Web
Resources, including the SumTotal Website, Denny Dedmore’s Website, and Peter Jackson’s Website. In this section, I will discuss and present
to you a comprehensive listing of the more commonly used Resources.
The home page for
my Website. From this Home Page, you will
find links to Demonstrations, Tutorials, and information about the various
books I have currently in publication.
The home page for
the SumTotal Website. From this Home Page, you will
find links to ToolBook, Training, and the SumTotal
LMS products.
ToolBook Instructor 9
(Blackcomb) Preview
This link provides
information about the upcoming release of ToolBook Instructor 9.
This is the Home
Page for ToolBook Instructor 2004. From this Home Page, you will find links to
information about this release, ToolBook training, ToolBook support, a link to
a trial download page, case studies, an e-learning showcase, and much more.
A link to current
postings about ToolBook by SumTotal employees
including Brad Crain and Tim Barham.
Get Developer's Exchange Tools for Local
A link to a
download page and information about the Developer’s Exchange Tools.
A link to the
ToolBook Knowledgebase where you can look up information about ToolBook using a
keyword search.
ToolBook Downloads Page at SumTotal
Download Page for
ToolBook related downloads at Sumtotal.
A link to a page
where you can find demonstrations of a variety of e-learning products built
using ToolBook.
ToolBook Product
Discussion List
This link gives
you access to the archives of the ToolBook Product Discussion List, as well as
a link so you can join this list of many of the best ToolBook folks in the
world.
This link gives you
access to all the great information and resources provided by Jeff Rhodes at
This link gives
you access to information about past and future events. This is the best
ToolBook Conference going and is a must for anyone wanting to have a good time,
meet great people and learn a lot about ToolBook.
ToolBook Help
(Denny Dedmore's Site)
Denny’s contains a
wealth of information on ToolBook.
Peter Jackson's
ToolBook Developer's Site
This is a must if
you want to extend your current abilities in ToolBook.
This is a news
site and portal for ToolBook. Keep an
eye on this site for the latest news on ToolBook.
Those of you that
know or have heard of Mauro can appreciate the quality of his Website.
TCC Publishing, Inc
Internet Address: tomhall1@tcc-pub.com
Phone:
252-758-4590
Fax:
252-758-4590