Modgets
"Modget" is short for "model widget". Modgets are interface objects
that do special, Indie-specific things involving objects in your GBS's
"model": questions and answers, tests and results, arguments and
evidence, and so forth.
Question viewers
How to make a question viewer
Go into Design Interface mode. Drag a question viewer off the palette
onto your window. Double click on the viewer to choose the question
button type:
- Ugly buttons makes ugly buttons. At least, Wolff thinks they're
ugly, even though he made them.
- Mac buttons makes better looking buttons that can hold less text.
Beware: the background color of these buttons can vary from MacOS
version to MacOS version.
- Two-pict buttons let you define an "up" look and a "down" look.
How to make questions appear in a question viewer
- Find a trigger (or make one) that occurs when you want these
questions to appear. If this is from a button, like a zoomer button,
edit its trigger by clicking the "Edit trigger" button on its gray
editor window.
- Choose Create/Add under the list of Topics on the event.
- Name the topic something you might possibly remember.
- Create a new question by selecting Create/Add under the list of
questions.
- Edit the question text to your liking. Then choose the QL upon
which it appears. (Remember that questions are bound to the list upon
which they appear, and the question-lists (or QLs) are bound to
interface objects.) Choose the one that corresponds to the question
viewer you just created.
- Repeat until you've added all the questions you want to the topic.
Now clicking on the button you started with should make those
questions appear.
Answer viewers
(write me!)
One answer's worth of points
You can set your evidence viewer to act like an Advise-style point-browser,
where, when an answer is visible, you see that answer's points (and those
points only) at the same time.
What does it do?
For every answer that gets shown for whatever reason, this evidence
viewer will show that points answers, regardless of which evidence list
appears in that points' "Appears on evidence list..." slot. When a new
answer is shown, the current points disappear and are replaced by the new
answer's points, and so forth. Thus, this is a temporary record of the
points for currently-shown answers.
Every answer viewer lists for which speakers it shows answers. This system
sworks the same way---you are making an evidence list viewer that shows
points for some set of speakers. Chances are, you're making one of these
to go with some answer viewer, so you'll want them to have the same list of
speakers.
It ENTIRELY REPLACES any previous behavior of the evidence viewer, so don't
go trying to use the same evidence viewer for other purposes. It will NOT
act like a normal evidence viewer if you have any speakers selected as
described below.
Why do I need it?
So far, this feature is due to be used in Rembrandt for two reasons:
- So they can save screen real estate: They want to show the points
for each answer they show, but they don't have room for a full-fledged
chronological notebook beneath the evidence viewer, so they have this,
which lets students see what the points are but doesn't scroll any
direction.
- So they can have a categorized notebook: Rembrandt has an amazing
number of points that would be nice if they could have conveniently
divided into several subnotebooks, but they would like to show each
answer's points all together at least once so students can remember which
points go with which answer.
How do I set it up?
- Drag out an evidence viewer.
- Open its gray editor by double-clicking on it.
- Open its white editor by clicking on the great big "Edit Evidence
Viewer..." button.
- Create a new evidence list by clicking "Create/Add" underneath the
slot that says "Evidence List".
This is the storage place for the
temporary evidence that you'll be showing. You'll not want to make any
point's "Appears on evidence list..." refer to this list, since every time
you show that point, it will be wiped away the next time an answer is
shown.
Name it something you'll
remember not to use and hit "Done."
- Twistdown the pane that reads "One answer's worth of points" which is
at the bottom of the white editor.
- Use Find/Add to select speakers.
These should be the speakers
for whose answers you'd like these points to appear. Exammple: if you have two
speakers, "Mr. Expert" and "Ms. Other Expert" who both appear in the
answer view for which you want this evidence list to display points, then
select both of them here.
- You'll probably want to restrict drags from this notebook.
- Close all the editors, being sure to hit the "Done" button.
And that's it! The rest of it will be taken care of by INDIE. You
can always add new speakers as needed.
If you ever want your evidence list viewer to start acting like a
normal evidence viewer, just remove all speakers from the list in the
"One answer's worth of points" pane. The viewer will start acting
like a normal viewer, and the evidence list you created will also act
like a normal evidence list.
Topic viewers
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Evidence viewers
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Trash
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Glossary viewers
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Argument tabs
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Last modified 1/27/98 ST