Tutor Builder™ is copyright 1988 by Gary Dauphin. It is shareware. You may feel free to distribute to anyone you wish under the following conditions: 1) This documentation, and a data file called "Intro Screen" must be distributed un-altered with this program and, 2) you do not charge a fee for this program.
Hypercard is fantastic for producing interactive tutorial programs for learning. For example, I know of one fantastic Hypercard stack that shows pictures of the human skeleton, and guides you through the different bone structures, letting you interactively decide what bone structures to view.
The only problem with Hypercard is that to put together a nice, interactive learning stack, you must have a good head for programming (even though it is somewhat easier than regular programming!). Many adults can't or won't do it, and certainly a third grader couldn't.
The purpose of Tutor builder is to allow anyone the ability to create interactive programs. Anyone can do it, because most of the work is already done, all you have to do is "draw" the "cards" in MacPaint! The Tutor Builder program plays back the "cards" you draw in MacPaint in a pre-described order, allowing you to interactively:
Jump forward a card
Jump backwards a card
Change Chapters or sections
Turn Sound on or off
Return to the beginning of the tutorial
Some sample application ideas for Tutor Builder include:
Introducing a new employee to your company, with pictures of the
facilities, the company's managers, and the products they make.
A car dealership has a tutorial on the types of vehicles available, and
pictures of each.
A tourist commission might create one with pictures of all the fun
things to do in your area. Included could be maps, photographs, and
drawings (as well as scanned images!)
Here's how it works:
The user decides on a topic for the tutorial. He then draws a title card in MacPaint to describe his tutorial. Then, chapter titles are chosen (chapters can be 1 through 9). The user then creates a chapter screen (in MacPaint) that shows the different chapters in the tutorial. Next, information cards are drawn in MacPaint, and saved to disk. Then, Tutor Builder™ is placed in the same folder as the MacPaint drawings, and the program is launched. It then "plays" back the cards in a Hypercard-like fashion.
Here's the MacPaint drawings that must exist, and the order they are viewed in by Tutor Builder™:
Note that Chapter numbers can only range from 1 to 9, but page numbers can go to 32767. Also, note that a chapter doesn't have to exist! You can have chapters 1, 5,6,8 and 9 if you wish, and the program will function properly. Unused chapters will simply not be executed. Here's a explantion of the MacPaint files:
Intro Screen - This is the copyright and introduction screen for Tutor Builder™. It must be present, and must not be altered. It will always appear once at the beginning of the program.
Title Screen - This is the MacPaint drawing that tells the user what your tutorial is all about. A sample Title Screen is included for you to use as a guide.
Chapter Screen - This is the MacPaint drawing that shows the user what chapters are available, and presents an icon for each chapter. The user then clicks the mouse on the icon of choice, and that chapter is executed. When this screen appears, the program waits for a mouse click to determine which chapter to execute. The screen is divided into 5 sections acrossed and 2 sections down. By checking where the mouse was clicked, it knows which chapter to execute. Note that the extreme lower right corner is the "stop" area, which brings the user back to the beginning of the tutorial. For a templet to use in drawing the Chapter Screen, use the MacPaint drawing called "Chapter Screen.form."
Chapter 1 Page 1 - The first MacPaint drawing, representing the first page of the first chapter. Note the name! Each drawing in every chapter must be named using the same naming conventions! There MUST be a space after the word Chapter, a space after the first number, and a space after the word Page. Chapter numbers must be 1 through 9 and page numbers must be 1 or greater. Don't skip a page number in the same chapter! If you have Chapter 1 Page 1 and Chapter 1 Page 3, the program won't find a Chapter 1 Page 2, and will return to the Chapter Screen after Page 1 is viewed! Page 3 of chapter 1 would never be viewed! For a templet for these "cards" or "pages", use the MacPaint drawing "Chapter 1 Page 1.form". To end a chapter, just stop creating MacPaint drawings with that Chapter number.
Limits:
This program does have a few limitations, and I want to share them with you ahead of time:
It does not support color. All drawings must be saved in black and white in the original MacPaint format.
MacPaint drawings used with this program can not be too large. I believe about 35k is the biggest MacPaint drawing that will work, however, that is usually enough K to build a MacPaint drawing the size of a MacPlus screen (the default window size for Tutor Builder™). If you use a file too large, you will get one of the following error messages when it is accessed by Tutor Builder:
Out of Memory
Divide overflow error
The error message will also tell you which drawing was too big...
If this occurs, reduce the size of your MacPaint drawing by erasing some things drawn on the screen. Remember, anything drawn more than 4 inches below the top of the page (in the MacPaint drawing) won't be seen, so erase anything that might be down there.
If a file needed by Tutor Builder™ is not found in the folder with the program, it will tell you on the screen with an error message. Usually, the file is there, but you made a mistake when you typed in the name of the file. Try finding the file and changing the name. For example, you may have named Chapter Screen to be Chapeter Scren by mistake. The following files MUST exist in the same folder as Tutor Builder™:
Intro Screen
Title Screen
Chapter Screen
Stop Sign
When you create a chapter, you create MacPaint drawings such as Chapter 1 Page 1, Chapter 1 Page 2, etc. This is how the program knows what MacPaint drawings to view in what order. If you select a chapter that has no Page 1, the program simply returns to the Chapter Screen. In addition, if the program looks for a page called Chapter 1 Page 6, and it isn't found, it simply returns to the Chapter Screen. Therefore, if you create, say, a Chapter 6 Page 4 and a Chapter 6 Page 6, after viewing Chapter 6 Page 4, the program will return to the Chapter Screen because it could not find a Chapter 6 Page 5.
To help you decide how to draw your MacPaint drawings, I have included some sample drawings. See the previous sections to determine what sample drawings are available.
Tutor Builder™ must exist in the same folder as the MacPaint drawings, in order for the program to work properly. Therefore, if you are going to create more than one tutorial on the same disk, you will have to copy Tutor Builder™ into each folder where the drawings exist.
This program is shareware. The payment for using Tutor Builder is simple: Just send a copy of any tutorials you create using this program to: Gary Dauphin, PO Box 5932, Metairie, Louisiana, 70059. Please include a note if it is okay for me to share your work with other people.
