[Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

Fri Nov 16 11:31:46 GMT 2012

me neither

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 16 November 2012 11:17
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

If you bit.ly'd the original URL they wouldn't have a starting point to work
from. I'm not losing too much sleep about that to be honest,

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 16 November 2012 11:14
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

triviality is relative - in most cases they'd deserve to be congratulated if
they'd worked all that out! ;-)

That said I have always wondered if we should have a secret url option in
addition to the simple public url. Different purpose obviously but on a more
basic level people have provided links in quiz feedback etc to remedial or
extension material based on result and in those cases it's far easier for a
student to try template_id=5, template_id=6, template_id=7 and so on to get
to the other resources than it would be to view the xml and get to linkID's.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 16 November 2012 11:01
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

That might have to be a fact of life.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 16 November 2012 10:47
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

Yeah I know that, I just mean outputting them to the xml file. if people
don't have access to the other ids then they can't abuse them.

Say for example you have a section that can't be reached except by getting
past some challenge. It would be trivial to create a deep link to the
congratulations page.

Regards,

John Smith

Learning Technologist

School of Health & Life Sciences

Glasgow Caledonian University

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 10:37 AM
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

linkIDs are made by the wizard every time a page is added. It's hardly any
overhead, and would allow deep linking at runtime because every page has got
one.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 16 November 2012 10:35
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

Yes Ron, totally forgot about that but then that might be connected to the
whole linear/non-linear discussion.

The other thing I was going to say was that just now it would be a trivial
matter to take an LO that was deep linked to say page 5 (PGxxxxx) and get
into the XML, get the other linkIDs and create a new URL deep linking to a
different page, against perhaps what the author intended? Is this an issue?
Should the xml file only output the linkIDs that are actually required, ie
if that page has been enabled for deep linking?

Regards,

John Smith

Learning Technologist

School of Health & Life Sciences

Glasgow Caledonian University

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 10:25 AM
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

Sounds good.

The only thing I forgot to mention is that 1. doesn't quite negate the use
of plain text connector because of the option to control navigation buttons.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 16 November 2012 10:18
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

1.      Is all done. A useful method for other connector navigation is the
rootIcon.pageLink() method which (guess what) navigates to a page based on a
linkID. Johnathan: what other navigation support do you need (if anything)?

2.      Yes, maybe. A separate problem.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 16 November 2012 10:14
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

ok sounds like two plans:

1. enabling the context menu linking between pages using linkID - far easier
and more reliable than the old pageTitle script

2. perhaps at some point a small share icon/option in the interface which
pops up options to share this LO and share this page perhaps even a twitter
share option!

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 16 November 2012 10:03
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

Leave the linking from outside to one side for now. I think that needs to be
available in the runtime to all users of the LO somehow, rather than the
editor side of things?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 16 November 2012 10:03
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

three thoughts...

1. I've often thought the ability to internally link between pages by
manually adding the asfunction page title script should be easier so having
that as part of the context menu would be great!

2. However that's different to the ability of an author to create a suitable
external 'permalink' to a specific page by exposing access to the linkID

3. Perhaps the ideal solution for an author to generate an external link
containing the right linkID if possible would be to have a clickable link or
button in the editor. So on each page there is a 'permalink to this page'
icon or link which when click pop-up the browser window with the full url
and linkID or copies the same to the clipboard and alerts to that fact.

I know that's easier said than done and there is the aspect that the LO
would need to be set to public too but just a few thoughts...

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 16 November 2012 09:39
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

That would effectively make the plain text connector redundant because you'd
be able to add links to other pages anywhere you like.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 16 November 2012 09:20
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

Re. 3 - Can't the context menu just have a new entry in the context menu,
"Link to page" above "Hyperlink" which opens a new dialog letting the user
select the Page from a list?

Regards,

John Smith

Learning Technologist

School of Health & Life Sciences

Glasgow Caledonian University

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 9:16 AM
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

1.      I can easily do that: as the list is built, I loop over every page.
At that point I can check for a pageID and make it into a linkID. I will add
this code and check it in.

2.      When we did the setNavigationStyle() thing there are two options:
historical and linear, with different graphics (not settled on the graphics
yet) for the back button and the ability to add a home button with
addHomeButton(). That's all done engine wise. Does anything else need to
happen?

3.      I'm not close enough to this detail. What's the answer: to expose
the linkID in the wizard somewhere, or allow it to be copied to the
clipboard?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Kemp
Johnathan
Sent: 15 November 2012 16:39
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

But will attach again here .... whoops

On 15 November 2012 16:28, Kemp Johnathan <johnathan.kemp at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

Sorry for the delay in responding - had to pop out for a while.

The 3 outstanding issues are

1.     Whether to enable the pageList control to receive a pageID in the xml
data and convert it to a linkID. This is not essential. It will just provide
better backward compatibility with any projects using the current Connector
pages.

2.     Decide on what navigation options are acceptable to you and to what
degree support for setting them is provided by the engine rather than with
extra code in the models. This is discussed in the navigation.pdf document
that I have posted previously but will attach again here. If you need any
clarification on any of it please let me know. Once I know what support is
available in the engine I can work from there. 

3.     We need to decide how best to handle the plainText connector given
that the Author in XOT cannot see the linkID value for a page. If it is
acceptable to you then one option is to allow the Author to add child page
elements in the same way I have implemented how you specify specific pages
for the Connector Menu in the example I posted earlier. Then the Author can
just put the number of the page in the hyperlink i.e. first child page = 1,
second child page = 2. If it would help I set this up for your appraisal.

Kind regards

Johnathan

On 15 November 2012 13:41, Julian Tenney <Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:

OK. So we can push on with making the linkID / pageList stuff work in
toolkits, that will naturally apply to the pageTemplates projects, and you
guys can then sort out the page wizards implementations. 

What do you need me to do?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Kemp
Johnathan
Sent: 15 November 2012 12:00

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

I have just had confirmation from Tom that the use of one .rlm file and two
xwd files in the manner discussed earlier will not cause any problems for
the creation of templates.xwd files or translation issues.

JK

On 15 November 2012 11:58, Kemp Johnathan <johnathan.kemp at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

If Xerte and XOT can share the same .rlm file then this will give the best
integration between Xerte and pageTemplates and XOT and pageTemplates.
Support and development work on the rlm files can still carry on in Xerte
with any necessary changes to the data they consume being accommodated by
editing the respective two xwd files. The rlm file will know that in Xerte
Pages mode it is getting pageIDs and in pageTemplates / XOT it is getting
linkIDs.

We need to finalise how the navigation options will work to be certain that
this will not preclude this option.

JK 

On 15 November 2012 11:41, Julian Tenney <Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:

The crux of it seems to be then, how do we support connectors in page
wizards?

Otherwise, the linkID / pageList controls make a big difference to the
usability of connectors in toolkits / page templates projects.

So options;

Support them through a different set of files that are only deployed in page
wizards in standalone Xerte

Or drop them from page wizards / standalone xerte

Is this the consensus we're reaching?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Kemp
Johnathan
Sent: 15 November 2012 11:31

To: For Xerte technical developers

Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Connectors

To try to narrow this down it seems to me we need to 

1. Resolve the navigation option handling for the Connector Pages in XOT

2. See if it is still possible to use a single rlm file and two xwd files

3. If it is possible then we have the option to run with Xerte Pages
projects and XOT / Page Templates still using the same .rlm files.

4. If it is not possible to run with a single rlm file and separate xwd
files for Xerte and XOT Page Templates then

either

a) We separate XOT and Xerte and they go their separate ways with completely
separate sets of model files and xwd files but this could lead to
discrepancies between pageTemplates projects and XOT projects as
pageTemplates projects would be using the xerte rlm files.

or

b) We keep support for pages projects in Xerte but set the Connector pages
xwd files to be only available to XOT. This will remove Connector pages from
being available in Xerte and make them only available to XOT /
pageTemplates.

or

c) We scrap all support for pages projects in Xerte and take Xerte back to
where it was before page wizards or pages projects were developed. i.e You
can round trip XOT to pageTemplates projects but you cannot access
individual page wizards in Xerte.

Kind regards

Johnathan

On 15 November 2012 11:02, Kemp Johnathan <johnathan.kemp at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

As a way of putting off the day we need to make a decision I can offer the
following, but I don't know what impact any developments regarding the
navigation aspects will have on this because I don't know what how you want
to handle this yet.

I can produce a set of files for each connector page as follows using the
connector menu page as an example below

connectorMenu.rlm

being a single rlm file that will work in XOT or Xerte

connectorMenu.xwd

being an xwd file that works in Xerte and is flagged for xerte only and uses
text fields and Page IDs instead of pageLists

xot_connectorMenu.xwd

being an xwd file that works in XOT using the pageList control and is
flagged to only be used in XOT

At present the use of the pageList control will break the connections set up
in any legacy projects that are already created, unless it can be made to
look up the linkID if the xml data contains data that does not begin with
"PG".

The way the menu connector handles the option to specify a list of pages has
changed so that the Author can select pages using the pageList control (or
enter pageIDs individually in Xerte) so that will break legacy projects but
it will present a consistent approach between the two.

In principle what should happen is when you build the template.xwd file the
xot_connectorMenu.xwd file should get included and the connectorMenu.xwd
file should get ignored. But I need to check with Tom if there are any
implications with this.

I have attached a pageTemplates project example containing the reworked Menu
Connector so you can see how it is panning out. I will need to edit the code
a little to make it agnostic about pageIDs or linkIDs but that should be
fairly simple.

I have used the linkID to locate the page index so don't I can manage with
out a rootIcon.gotoPage(linkID) method. It is easier this way to work with
both pageIDs and linkIDs.

This just leaves how to handle the plainText connector situation in which
the Author cannot see the linkID value. 

I had a thought about that. You could add a child element like I have in the
menu Connector and then put an index value in the hyperlink e.g. <a
href="asfunction:_level0.engine.fnTextCon,1" target="_blank"> would point to
the first child element, <a href="asfunction:_level0.engine.fnTextCon,2"
target="_blank"> would point to the second child element. The fnTextCon
function could then look up the linkID from the xml data.

Then for all the connector pages we have the navigation options to resolve.

Kind regards

Johnathan

On 15 November 2012 10:12, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk> wrote:

The only additional thing that springs to mind right now is whether there
can be a check whether the project is a pages/page wizard project and in
that case the pageList control isn't used and the old manually added pageID
is used instead. I guess Jonathan is best placed to know whether that would
work and what would be involved.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 15 November 2012 09:12
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Connectors

We need to figure out how we are going to deal with the connectors.

Summary

- We want to use the new pageList control in the wizard to allow users to
create and use linkIDs behind the scenes. Users will simply select the name
of the page they want to jump to from the pageList control. The pagelist
control writes the linkID of the selected page to the attribute's value.

- This means re-working the connector pages to use the linkID rather than
pageID (I don't think this is hard / lengthy)

- This brings a big improvement to the connectors in toolkits.

[so far so good

The same thing would also work with a page templates project in standalone
xerte. Project's could still be round-tripped to toolkits and back again.

[so far so good still]

Problem

The problem is with the page wizards. When using the wizard there, there is
no way of getting a list of pages in the piece, or generating linkIDs for
them, so this approach won't work. Now there are many problems, because the
page wizards share the code with the page templates models.

Considerations

Xerte standalone is pretty much at the end of its life. 

Hardly anyone uses page wizards in standalone xerte.

Before we discuss options, is there anything else to add to this summary?
Please keep comments short and to the point so that we can get a clear sight
of the problem and the options we have available.

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.html

Winner: Times Higher Education's Outstanding Support for Early Career
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n.html

Glasgow Caledonian University is a registered Scottish charity, number
SC021474

Winner: Times Higher Education's Widening Participation Initiative of the
Year 2009 and Herald Society's Education Initiative of the Year 2009.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,6219,en
.html

Winner: Times Higher Education's Outstanding Support for Early Career
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This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and
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