Digital Workshop

I am just now beginning to get into Opus v8. I suspect that the Question object is really powerful (although in the DW Tutorial the set-up seems pretty labor intensive, well at least in terms of stepping through the dialogue boxes).

What I want to do (or at least explore) is to 'feed content' into a Question object container. What I mean is at runtime, set the question text from a database, and set the 5 answer values from the DB. I would use an Opus Page that would serve as the appropriate Question template.

Any clues as to how to address the Child objects of the Question object?

Haven't found reasons to use this, but the Question object questions / answers are text boxes so you could just insert a variable or use OOP. There are some methods for controlling the object but whether these are as complete as from the GUI - would need to be explored.

IMO, if I was building something that pulled data from a database, I'd be building custom question objects anyway

Mack

Thanks for the reply Mack.

Let me start with a bit of my background thinking. As much as I love Opus for what it can do within the Editor Workspace, I kind-of resist the idea of going page by page in Opus and entering both content and interactivity. I want content to be loaded at runtime. I know I can do several things with external files -- text files, INI files, RTF into Docview, HTML into browser, etc.
------ I am just judging that managing and maintaining this CONTENT in several discrete files is not the way I want to go.

What I want to do is author content along the lines of a process or flow, that allows various branching -- so the User only sees what is relevant to his choices. The navigation flow would be mostly 'converging', but behind the scenes there is 'conditional filtering' based on User interaction/choices. It's an ambitious project, so I am looking for shortcuts where I can find them.... e.g. Opus question objects.

The Alternative:
My best alternative as I see it is to pursue CMS (content mgmt sys) and generate base content and CSS in whatever CMS suite I can work with.
At this point of creation I think the middleware would be a database that prescribes the flow and the rules or filtering... e.g. SQLite DB that provides the prescription for the flow of content.
Then I would mate up with Opus so that I can add more User interactivity.

Summary: I am drawn to the idea of CONTAINER / Presentation separate from external CONTENT.
Of course Opus enable external content, but I am struggling with selecting a developer/AUTHOR toolset that not only carries the content but has the metadata or tags to actually prescribe the conditional flow.

Whew! Apologies if I was not clear.

As for the OOP, conceptually I like the idea. I am not sure I have the skills at this point.
My most simplistic take on this is to create several Opus Pages which become the "Template containers" -- and then just MATE content and container as the User progresses through the exercise (interactive session).

When I start considering people want Mobile and leave the PC behind, I see Opus as 'limited'. I start thinking I had better just generate this content in a CMS Framework and then "multipublish" to various devices. Not the optimum solution, but probably resonates with mainstream. Problem is that I want to make User input/interactivity part of the flow.

I think this approach is even more significant when considering PUBLISHING to multiple platforms.

What is the solution I wonder?

Coming back to this...

First, I will reread my Post above and will probably edit it to make it a much simpler reply.

Second, I went back over some previous work I did or tried... and also reviewed the notes on OOP I saved.
I came across this contribution from Mackavi on essentially the very same topic. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3521&hilit=powerful+way+of+handling+the+entire+quiz

So I am resuming some work in this area. Bear in mind that commonplace terms like 'prototype' elude my immediate understanding (I am learning though), and actually structuring the OOP code (for constructor or new Object + prototype) has been a deep venture into trial and error. Lastly, I wrestle with how to 'see' or display user-defined objects (e.g., back to the spaceship scripts).

I'm going to go off and practice and experiment. I'll be saying "oops, that didn't work" until I get some "OOP, well that worked!"

Not really sure people used it - so haven't updated them, but the basics were here:

http://www.live.interaktiv.co.uk/index. ... Itemid=166

Mack

Thanks Mack.
I think I missed seeing that before. Nice webPage and styling BTW.
I'll take a look at the Code Bytes etc and see what I can glean (limited by my own 'small bites').

I am starting to find/google-into some general ECMA / Javascript reference info out there that is better than I have found in the past. At least the syntax presented is closer to what we see in OpusScript, but still the information spans JS 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 where many nice features do not apply in our beloved App.
For others interested: http://www.nusphere.com/kb/jscoreref/index.html (Again, keep in mind this is not specifically OpusScript, so you have to come up with a way to do your own 'mapping' between what's here and what inside Opus)

With that, and some Opus practice, I am getting more comfortable with 'prototypes', what a 'constructor' is, and creating objects. And I am starting to differentiate some of the nuances with different ways of using Functions and when / when-not to assign these to a variable. Still a good ways to go to understand the power here. And yet more distance to go to actually write a well-structured program. But I'm getting there. Thx.

Yeah, OpusScript is quite obsolete in terms of modern OOP and finding on-line resources that apply can be frustrating but from experience, you don't really need to understand the more advanced concepts that you find in today's programming books or even specialist OOP books.

Remember JavaScript isn't considered an OOP language by die-hards anyway - so it's best to keep it simple and just use the basics that will make life easier.

1. Create Objects
2. Use Properties
3. Use 'this'
4. Understand that everything in Opus is an object - The SCORM templates are a good example)

Generally, I don't use prototyping with methods but it's possible and I think Paul (NZ) has posted a set of examples that he uses for expanding array methods.

In terms of reference, find a really old JavaScript book - such as a first edition of the definitive guide or JS in 24hrs.

Regards,

Mack