| A Browse Sequence Generator |
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Having been a member of a couple of electronic publishing teams, I have encountered a few authoring problems which tend to crop up over and over again. One of these is the need for a tool of drafting picture and text sequences, i.a. some kind of a storyboard tool where you can study the material in a similar fashion as when you are reading a comic strip. I have written a couple of utilities, which do such things. Unfortunately, these programs can be used only on stand-alone Windows machines. Manuscript writers often interact over networks and from various operational systems. This situation calls for a web solution. While waiting for the emergence of scripting functionality on my university's Internet server, I resorted to client scripting which can achieve the goal here and now. In order to try out the script you need a Windows script host and the Microsoft Scripting Runtime which you can download from Microsoft (in case you don't already have such software on your machine). The program is written in the form of a VBScript document. It utilizes a page template which sets the output format of the program. It rather is easy to tweak the template for various needs. Browsing functionality is enabled by a set of back and forward buttons which you should feel free to redesign. You can study test output of the generator here. You may utilize the software any way you like, but don't redistribute it without due authorship recognition. Your comments are also most welcome. Please, pdonner@virtuosi.fi ( send me a message, [Browse Sequence Generator]) and write [Browse Sequence Generator] into the subject field of the message in order to identify it. |