Digital Workshop

The forum has been relatively silent on this topic, apart from PaulH advising that there is a bug that will make the function crash in certain circumstances.

So my question is: Has anyone achieved success?

Yes, I managed after a lot of trial and error!
Basically you need to publish your publication so that you have a folder full of individual files. To update you would simple replace other files over these. I created a link inside my publication to help the user to do this, but after a lot of playing around I just decided that it was all a bit pointless for what I wanted.

It's a shame you can't make one .exe file that can be updated.

You have done well

If this process ever gets to work properly, it could be useful. At first read, there seemed to be come inbuilt uncertainty -- which engendered some confusion in me, but that's not necessarily a challenge

I felt that not being able to add new pages/chapters was a shortcoming, that's of course if I've interpreted the instructions correctly.

These days there is too much software what reminds me of Maxwell Smart: "Missed by that much".

Thanks for confirming for me, that as a process, it's probably too labour-intensive and uncertain to chance wasting a lot of hours on the end process.

Please fill us in on what you are talking about. I use OPUS v6 every day and have no problem updating previously created Pubs containing WAV, MP3, GIF, JPEG, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2 files including Additional Resource Files.

Where's the problem? What is the problem?

Fred

In version 6 there is a new feature Update Publications. That's what I'm talking about. Have a look at page 53 of OPUS: New and extended features that was released with version 6.

It has nothing to do with the normal process of updating previously created pubs, and also has nothing to do with the types of objects used in a pub.

Hi Ray,

I've been following this thread and am confused by your comments.

"It has nothing to do with the normal process of updating previously created pubs, and also has nothing to do with the types of objects used in a pub."

Page 53 is below and it has everything to do with the normal process of updating previously created pubs. I have several applications which have an auto notification if a new version or update is available and use the autoupdate feature for this with no problems.

Update Publication
Opus allows you to publish updates of your stand alone publication by
publishing sections you choose. This means you can provide new
versions of pages or chapters via the internet or CD-Rom without
distributing the whole publication.
This is particularly useful for large publications but can also be used to
manage licencing and subscriptions. For example you include a
subscription page which will only lets the publication run for a year but
when the customer renews you simply send a new subscription page
which runs for a further year.
You can choose to update publications by updating individual pages or
by whole chapters. You need to publish the original publication in the
appropriate format. You cannot mix update sections. Thus once you
have chosen to publish and updateable publication to be updated by
chapter you cannot update individual pages and vice versa.
You cannot add or delete pages (even if publishing chapters) so you need
to ensure that the publication has all the pages you might need even if
they are not active in a particular version. If you do need to add pages or
delete pages you will need to republish the whole publication and supply
that as an update.[/b]

Andy

Can I suggest that if you know so much about using this new update publication function, you might like to post the details of exactly how you get it to work, because a few of us have been unable to get it to work.

I am aware of the acknowledged bug reported by DW.

Andy --

It turns out, I was thinking and referring to something totally different than Ray was talking about. Maybe I can explain the difference:

If you Publish a standalone presentation, then make a change and re-Publsih it before sending it out -- that's what I was thinking Ray was talking about. It's not.

OPUS v6 has a sophisticated feature (which I have NOT used) which allows you to Publish something, then give it to a client/viewer, then update it on their computer by individual Page or Chapter. That's what Ray meant. Your HELP section talks about setting up the way you Publish before hand, i.e. instead of one EXE, you select to Pub with individual Chapters, for example. Then when you Update, OPUS makes a NEW Chapter which replaces the original.

It would seem there are many variables which would have to be perfectly aligned for this to work. For example, if you are on a network, or you are not the Administrator, or if you place the Pub in a different sub-directory, then this might not work. Make sense?