Shapes question

HelpXplain is the exciting new animated infographics and screencast tool that integrates with Help+Manual.

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Shapes question

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Deconstructing one of the HX examples to see how it "ticks"...I have this general observation/question:

If I select an object such as a Shape or a Picture, is there no linkage to the source of the shape or picture? I'm guessing that in either case, the image is simply added into HX as an object and, after that, HX does not maintain any information about where it came from. Correct?

(I'm contrasting this to objects such as Pictures in H&M, which are linked to a specific file.)
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Tim Green
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Re: Shapes question

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Marc,

Like an .hmxz, an .xplain is really just a zip archive so you can unpack it and view everything it contains. It's all regular HTML and CSS and JS, with some XML definitions for the program itself. The actual files are all there, including the image files, and are referenced normally. Shapes and other non-file objects are objects, of course. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Shapes question

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

OK Tim, so I extracted the files from a small .xplain, edited one of the Capture*.png files in a paint program, then re-created the .zip archive & renamed it *.xplain.

I was very happy to see that when I loaded it into HX the corresponding Preview image was automatically updated on loading ...nice.

Mission accomplished; that's the capability I wanted.

EDIT: As a future feature request though, it'd be a nice option to be able to Copy the captured slide (*.png) within HX, Paste it into some other program for editing, then Copy & Paste it back into HX to replace the original slide. Would be much simpler & quicker than unpacking/repacking a Zip archive.
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Shapes question

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Mark Wilsdorf wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 9:21 pmAs a future feature request though, it'd be a nice option to be able to Copy the captured slide (*.png) within HX, Paste it into some other program for editing, then Copy & Paste it back into HX to replace the original slide. Would be much simpler & quicker than unpacking/repacking a Zip archive.
Hi Mark,

I agree about being able to copy an image for editing. However, there is an alternative to extracting and recreating the zip. If you do Save As... or Publish an HTML Slideshow to a temporary location, or even to your project location, all the images will be in a sub-folder there. You can copy and edit them from there. Then right-click on the image in HX, and Change Picture... to load the edited version.

cheers,

Martin.
Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Shapes question

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Martin!

Cool idea.

Looking at former HX posts I noticed that you are an "old hand" at HX already...so you've had opportunities to make the mental connections to possibilities I've not yet stumbled onto.

Much appreciated. Thanks!

Mark Wilsdorf
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