Digital Workshop

Hello

I've been using Opus for years and in its early days I used it
to demonstrate different programmes from Opus to various
teachers and lecturers.

I want to duplicate a programme now in two slightly different
versions where each one can launch the other.

I want to publish the programmes and run them both on a different
computer (portable laptop). I seem to remember having problems with
drives which I resolved at the time.

Please can someone refresh for me what I used to do? I'm sure it's
quite simple but my present programme takes half an hour to
publish and the trial and error time is too great.

Regards to all

Mike,

That's a funny one, and I've probably spoken those very words in my senior moments asking those around me to put me on track. "Why was I going to the garage?"

Okay here.... are you asking about Opus Launch-file action? Or are you asking here to solve the seemingly long publish time? For the latter, I cannot imagine a Win7 machine on steroids would take that much time. Look in the basic Opus help files for a couple pages on Optimizing your Opus Pub. The help files speak to how to organize pages and objects in the Organizer --- what Opus likes to see first, second, and so on. It also has an entry about improving the Pub for running (User using it).

Hi Larry



My file is enormous with many .pngs, jpgs bmps, midis and mp3s so I expect Opus to take a long time. However, I'll follow your suggestion and see if I can reduce it - thanks again.

I can run the launch on my production PC - amazingly quickly! - I'm just bothered about when I transfer to the laptop.

I seem to remember (about 15 years ago ) I found it difficult to tell Illuminatus (I think that's what it was called then ) where to find the programme on my presentation machine. I haven't tried yet but I'm now nearly finished (phew) and I don't want to spend hours retrying.

Have you had experience of this launch part with Opus?
Kind regards

On the first part here, launch external file, no I don't. I only tested it and explored what it can do (as far as opening other file types and launching other windows features or apps). As for "the Pub 'finding the right file' to open/launch", that is a matter of how you control your folders and resources (which should have by default a folder-name the same as the Pub file name. IIRC/IMguess. Do note that Opus SYSTEM VARIABLES are available to 'find' the publication folder/directory, and other common file paths.

Now what I got interested in a couple years ago was Publishing one master Opus Pub, and allowing Users to find and open other of my "content Pubs" for lack of a better term. See that discussion and method here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3530&hilit=launch+many

It occurs to me you could pursue yet another alternative: use an Opus Chapter for a main 'landing page', and then launch other Pages from Opus Chapters which are set to "open in their own window". That first 'landing page' could be set to a small page-size.
- - - - - - - -
Now for the second point, "reduce the size". I was not suggesting you reduce the size per se. DW's hints and guidelines in the help files are more about knowing which order Opus looks for things and what it does do when it cannot find them in an optimal sequence. There are other hints (somewhere) about not using bilinear sampling on images (as that gets resource/cup intensive at times). There are other hints about preloading resources to give the User a better experience. etc.

However, now that you mention size --- you might try to get Mack and others guide you on what kind of Publishing Settings/Options to use... especially for example for compression of files and resources.

Hi Larry

Thanks for your comments. I'm not concerned about the size or time of my programme which works.
So if it ain't broke don't fix it!!
This is probably very different from the usual scheme of Opus publications.
I'm only slightly confused about the links when I transfer two programmes to my presentation laptop.
I don't want to get a "Can't find" kind of scenario.
However, I'm going to carry on and see what results.

Kind regards