#Info On 1st CDROM Projec
4 messages in this thread
Dan Roudebush told me about a book called "The Apple CD_ROM Handbook".
Do any of you know about a similar book for PC compatible computers?
I'm just beginning my first CDROM project so I need to find as much
information as I can about the process that is required. Any
suggestions you might have would be appreciated. (Yes, I am looking
at the info in this forum's library.)
Microsoft says that the hypertext/database engine (called Viewer)
that they used for Cinemania, etc is part of the Microsoft Multimedia
Development Kit. Has anyone had any experience with it? What do you
think of it? How does it compare to other similar tools; eg the
Ntergaid tools. Thanks in advance for your help.
I'm just beginning my first CD project also. I have learned quite a
lot about Microsoft Viewer. The Beta for the version 2.0 of Viewer
just shipped, and I also just got back from a 2-day Microsoft Viewer
class. The way I think of Viewer is as an enhanced version of
Windows Help.
If you look at Windows Help, you'll see that it supports hypertext
quite nicely, as well as some other features such as embedded
graphics, history lists, etc.
Viewer is the same but with more features. The biggest single feature
is the full-text search engine. Viewer also supports more
flexibility in screen layout, and comes with libraries you can call
into for multimedia support.
Like Help, you have to use .RTF format to compile your title, and
there aren't currently any third-party tools that let you compose and
edit in a really interactive WYSIWYG way — with the exception of
tools like RoboHelp (from Blue Sky, with a 2.0 version due out pretty
soon), which are good at composing Help titles, and can also be used
for that subset of Viewer authoring.
I don't know about "Ntergaid". Can you fill us in?
Viewer seems to be best for publishing tasks where there are lots of
pages of text, and you want a fair amount of hypertext among them.
Anything fancy you want to do you'll have to write C code for, since
Viewer doesn't support it directly. However, at least Viewer DOES
support calling out to DLLs, so the hooks are there. For example, in
Cinemania, there is a very nice looking "remote control" device that
appears on screen that the user manipulates to make things happen.
That was implemented in C code outside of Viewer, but Viewer calls it
and it calls into Viewer to manipulate things.
I have also played with ToolBook. I like ToolBook better for
prototyping, since it's all interactive and interpreted (not like
Viewer, which is compiled). But there are enough things that I don't
like about ToolBook that I wouldn't consider it for publishing large
amounts of text.
Thanks for the information, Sam. Do you know when the Viewer v2.0 is
supposed to be released? How did you find out about the Viewer class? Did
it cost anything? Where was it held? Was it an MSU class?
Ntergaid is a company that sells a full line of multimedia authoring tools.
Their main product is Hyperwriter! and it is similar to Viewer.
"Hyperwriter! is an interactive hypermedia and multimedia authoring tool.
Based on an underlying hypermedia engine, Hyperwriter is used to construct
interactive electronic documents." The president of Ntergaid has an article
about developing CDROMs in the latest Programmer's Connection catalog.
– Eric
Eric,
I can't give you a date on Viewer 2.0. I found out about the workshop from MS
Developer Support. Someone else actually made the arrangements, but I believe
the workshop was free. It was conducted at MS in Redmond, and it was not a
regular MSU class. Thanks for the info on the Programmer's Connection article!
— Samuel (not Sam…)