[Xerte] Just installed, a few problems?

[Ari Doucette]

>
>  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?
>
It is a bit of both, more the first. We just have a lot of powerpoint files
from the SME that we (or, rather, "I") need to make into basic page-turner
SCOs with quizzes at the end.


>  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.
>
Saving PPT slides as images is easy enough. That could be done with a batch
file or with AutoIT. Then the images could all be converted in one go to a
more usable format with IrfanView. Trouble is, the images do not look as
nice as they do in the PowerPoint slides (FlashSpring seems to suffer from
the same problems). There are issues with transparency in all of the file
formats I've tried, though emf and wmf seem to look the best. WMF handles
the images of text the best, while EMF handles the shapes with
transparencies and drop-shadows the best. Both can be made into
decent-looking PNGs in a batch with IrfanView. What really looks the best,
though, is capturing them all manually with SnagIt.


>  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.
>
Unfortunately, I am not familiar with XSLT. (Can you believe it, and in this
day and age?) All the xml transformations I've done have been with basic
Authorware string manipulation and lots of repeat-while and if-then-else. (I
did use Authoware to turn Word docs from our SME for our training into DB
tables, Stored Proceedures, and ascx pages with this method... Spent 2 days
programming and saved 3 weeks of work.)
So, after looking at the MS XML, I've decided that it is above my head and
that lots of manual import is in my future...


>   Are you concerened about the image output because of the file size /
> bandwidth requirements?
>
Yes, but not primarily. It is primarily an issue of image quality. For
example, if Captivate acually brought in the PowerPoint slides without
making the text fuzzy and hard-to-read I'd use Captivate's PPT import. So
far, none of the importers that I've tried can come close to matching the
quality of a screen capture.

Jules, thanks for your interest in this and for your help.
I really think I'll just be manually making screen captures of the PPT
slides. Not too big a deal, and it looks (much) nicer.

Regards,
Ari
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