[Xerte] Just installed, a few problems?

[Tenney Julian]

Is the problem that you have a lot of existing ppt you want to deploy in
the flash player, or is the problem that you are looking for a tool
non-technical users can use to create content simply?
 
If it's the former, then a license for something like FlashSpring would
cost you much less than the cost of your time to make a converter -
you'd have to live with the resulting swfs, but you could be up and
running tomorrow. If it's the latter, then consider Xerte's templates -
think AW Knowledge Objects, but with a wizard that is much easier to
make. You could also make your own xml editor for creating and editing
the xml the templates consume if you wanted a fancy / custom one.
 
Are you concerened about the image output because of the file size /
bandwidth requirements? 
 
J


________________________________

	From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ari Doucette
	Sent: 13 December 2007 12:18
	To: Xerte discussion list
	Subject: Re: [Xerte] Just installed, a few problems?
	
	
	Well, I've looked at it and decided that it is too daunting for
now. I thought it might help me get the job done faster, but it would
take me (much) longer to make a converter than to just take screen caps
of the ppt slides and insert them into Xerte. 
	 
	From what I looked at:
	The simplest would be to just save the PowerPoint as images
(file -> save as -> other formats) and then write a script that makes a
Xerte page for each PowerPoint slide.
	I looked at a number of PPT -> Flash converters yesterday. All
of the products I looked at simply converted the PPT slides into image
files and then made a swf from the image files.
	I also looked at a few different flavors of PPT XML. The one
made by OpenOffice is the simplest, saved as an sxi file, unziped, and
then looked at the xml. Trouble is, it also turns the ppt slides into
images! The MS XML is, as one would guess, not easy to read or
understand. I guess all the info must be there, but I wouldn't know how
to parse it. Too bad. 
	You are certainly correct when you write that it "would not be a
trivial undertaking". I guess the way to go would be an xslt
transformation from ms office xml to some flat xml that Xerte can then
parse and make into an rlo. 

	Regards,
	Ari
	
	On Dec 13, 2007 4:02 AM, Tenney Julian
<Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:
	

		Ari,
		
		I'm not too sure - I haven't looked into them too much.
I've not found a
		good free one yet. If you do, please let me know about
it. 
		
		Of the commercial ones, the one I like best is
FlashSpring, which
		integrates really nicely into PowerPoint. I've played
the resulting swfs
		in Xerte with no problems, but I didn't pay too much
attention to the 
		resulting file size, so I'm not sure how it gets
graphical elements out
		to flash. I would hazard a guess that almost certainly
the file size
		will be smaller if the objects are drawn with code.
		
		If you really want to explore the ppt - xerte option,
then there would 
		be quite a lot of work to do I think. I don't know much
about ppt's xml,
		so I don't know how hard it would be to create some sort
of transform to
		get that into a form Xerte could play. Broadly there
would be two 
		approaches you could take: try and get from ppt to
directly to an rlo
		file and play that directly, or get from ppt to an xml
format that you
		can read in in xerte and use as the basis for a dynamic
template. I
		think the first would be the hardest. If you could get
ppt to export
		some xml, and a directory of images, sounds and video
used then you
		ought to be able to use that xml as the basis for a
template. Xerte can
		then load that xml, and you can then create the rlo file
at runtime. It 
		would not be a trivial undertaking.
		
		There is a document in the web site that outlines the
basics of creating
		dynamic templates - have a read of that. It takes you
through developing
		a simple dynamic quiz, and has all the info you would
need to start 
		developing your own xml based templates.
		
		J
		

		-----Original Message-----
		From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
		[mailto: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> ] On Behalf Of Ari
Doucette
		
		Sent: 12 December 2007 16:47
		To: Xerte discussion list
		Subject: Re: [Xerte] Just installed, a few problems?
		
		
		Thanks Julian. I'll look into the gradient fills that
you mentioned.
		
		> There's no ppt - xerte converter I'm afraid. There are
some good ppt
		to flash converters - then you can play the flash back
in Xerte, 
		
		Do you happen to know if these PPT -> Flash converters
bring in the
		PPT drawing objects as native Flash drawing objects
instead of as
		images? If so, then is there a way to figure out the
commands in flash 
		to make them?
		If these are the case, then I would be strongly tempted
to build my
		own ppt -> xerte converter for this project!
		
		Thanks again,
		Ari
		
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