Steps in preparing a text for the reader:

1. Preparing the gloss.

2. Preparing the text:

3. Inserting the gloss and text into the reader.

4. Inserting the Shockwave document into a HTML document.

You must format your text (your poem or prose passage) in a way that Director can understand it. You will write it in Lingo, Director's scripting language. It is pretty easy. Here are the instructions:

This is the script you will be using:

on exitFrame
  put “insert your script here” into field "textField1"
end

1. Type it out just like how I have it in Word. You don't have to write insert your script here, but you do need the quotation marks. The script should have three lines separated by paragraph breaks (not a manual line breaks. You also do not need to tab it over.

NB: I admit that on this webpage, I put manual line breaks (i.e., Shift and Enter key), and not paragraph breaks, at the end of the first and second lines of the script above, but only because it would look better on this webpage.

2. If you are planning to "shock" a prose passage that consists of one paragraph, simply copy the passage and paste it inside the quotation marks, where it says insert your script here, and then save.

If you are glossing a poem, you will want each line of the poem to be on a separate line. You have to tell Director that is what you want.

Here is the poem I was working with:

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

It has two lines, so I have to modify the above script a little, so it will look like this:

on exitFrame
  put “insert your script here” & RETURN & “insert your script here” into field "textField1"
end

(Color added for emphasis.)

In the case of my poem, Catullus 85, it will look like this:

on exitFrame
  put “Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.” & RETURN & “nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.” into field "textField1"
end

This tells Director to put down the first line AND then return (go to the next line) AND then put down the next line.

NB: The word RETURN must be in capitals!

What if I want to indent the second line a little?
All you have to do is put in a few spaces at the beginning of the second quote (look closely!):

on exitFrame
  put “Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.” & RETURN & “      nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.” into field "textField1"
end

What if I want to separate two paragraphs by a blank line?
Instead of doing one line break (& RETURN &), you just have to do two line breaks (& RETURN & RETURN &).

What if I want to insert line numbers?
When you paste in line five into the script, put in a few spaces after the last word, and then type in the number 5. I have found that it will take some fussing around to get the numbers all in a nice column, but you do want it to look all nice and straight, don't you?

NB: Director will recognize these line numbers as words! That means that you need to insert the numbers into your gloss list, i.e., after the last word in line 5, you need to insert a new line and type 5@@; likewise for 10, 15, etc.

Back to 1. Preparing the gloss.

Ahead to 3. Inserting the gloss and text into the reader.

Ahead to 4. Inserting the Shockwave document into a HTML document.

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last updated November 30, 2003
comments, corrections?