Month: May 2008

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Grammar Workshop: The Dreaded Semicolon

 
If there is one punctuation mark that rivals public speaking and clowns as a thing that people fear most, it is the semicolon. Maybe that is because grammar mavens and middle-school teachers tend to describe it something like this: "The semicolon functions to join somewhat causally related independent clauses within compound sentences and to separate elements of a list at least one element of which contains a comma." Ok. Got it. Well, maybe not so much. Let's break that down into what really are only two jobs for the semicolon.
 
The easier job to understand is when to use a semicolon in a list. Of course, normally commas separate the items on a list, like this:
 
  • On the hike we saw squirrels, deer, and a bear. (the second comma is optional)
Sometimes, however, an item on the list might have a comma inside it for some reason. As soon as that happens, the list becomes confusing. Readers can no longer tell which items are being listed. Here is an example:
 
  • Lyon, France, New York, and Amsterdam are the cities we will visit on the tour.
Wait a minute–France isn't a city! That's right, France is included to identify where the city Lyon is. To make this clear, we need to upgrade the commas to semicolons in order to clearly separate the list:
  • Lyon, France; New York; and Amsterdam are the cities we will visit on the tour.
The other job of the semicolon is to separate two sentences that have been combined into one. Normally, you use a comma plus a joining word like and, or, nor, yet, but, or so to separate two joined sentences, like this:
  • The designer added the final graphic, so the layout was almost complete.
Each half of this sentence could have been a separate sentence, but I chose to put them together because they are closely related. To be a little more arty, I could have used a semicolon instead of the comma and then left out the joining word (called a conjunction):
  • The designer added the final graphic; the layout was almost complete.
That's it for the semicolon. Just two jobs: Serving as an upgrade from a comma to separate list items, and separating two sentences that have been combined into one. What's so scary about that?

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
 
Want help with a grammar issue? Email us your troubles and we'll turn Jennie loose!
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Ground Floor Video Production for eLearning and Web Delivery: Part 2

 
The following is a three-part series for the beginning to intermediate eLearning content developer. It's designed to teach, from the ground up, how to add video to content for eventual delivery on the world wide web. If you missed it, I recommend you read last weeks article, Part One: Setting Up for Success. 
 
 

Scripts, Actors and Shooting the Video

 
The script…
 
Good scripts mean good content. A script-writer needs to think about the content to be presented, and the audience. Knowing the demographics of the audience will help you address the audience, and cater to them–a very powerful part of any eLearning course. For instance, you would write your script differently for a group of high school seniors than you would for a group of experienced software engineers.
 
The written word is very different than the spoken word. As you write your script, you need to break out, momentarily, of that narration or voice-over shell in which many developers have a tendency to feel comfortable. I would encourage you to use a conversational tone in your script-writing to avoid a stiff delivery and jarring content. Pick up a textbook and read it aloud to a friend. Then try to explain the same concepts to your friend in a conversational manner and you'll quickly see and hear the difference.
 
While writing a script, it can help to pause every once in a while and read your script back to yourself. Even better, ask a colleague to read your script to you. This simple step will most likely key you in to anything that sounds "off" or "strange."
 
The actor…
 
When the script is finished, you're ready to find your actor. Knowing your target demographic will help you pick your actor. Do you want the content to come from a peer? A supervisor? How about a character?
 
Your project might call for a round of auditions–get used to that and really pay attention to quality. Remember, the script you write and the actor who brings the script to life are likely intended for a paying customer. Both the script and actor should be of the highest-possible quality.
 
The introduction…
 
Once you've written your script and selected your actor, take the time to do a crucial, oftentimes overlooked step: introduce the script and actor to each other well before the shoot! Send the script to your actor as soon as possible. Ask the actor to come in early to go over the script with you. You can even teleconference (and use a Webcam), and make sure the actor understands the script.
 
It's important to allow everyone on your team enough time to become familiar with the content and the actor. There is nothing worse than getting someone in front of the camera for the shoot, and handing them a script to read cold. Trust me, it just doesn't work. Shooting a video isn't as simple as recording a voice-over (where you can "magically" splice things together). With video, you really have to get it right in the first place.
 
I would recommend that you prep the actor directly before the shoot. Take the time to put the actor at ease with your direction, and always treat your actors with professionalism and respect. Things will go much smoother if you direct the video in your mind before the shoot–iron things out in your head before expecting your actor to understand.
 
The shoot…
 
Once you've microphoned the actor and done a quick dry-run of the process in your mind, the first rule of thumb is to make sure you shoot as many takes as possible. I can't stress this enough. Shoot and shoot and shoot again. You don't need to be a taskmaster; give people ample breaks. But you don't want to let people leave the shoot until you have at least three good takes of everything you need.
 
Timing…
 
For a minute or two of video, you should expect to shoot for at least one hour to ensure you get through the entire take in one shot, several times. A key here is to not get frustrated. Keep your direction strong and professional, and keep a pace in keeping with the content. If you are naturally energetic in your day-to-day life, push pretty hard while recording. On the other hand, if you are a mellow kind of person, keep things mellow on the set. It's also a good idea to let the actor do a few loose takes, using his own words. Oftentimes this can yield surprisingly good results.
 
Once you are sure that everything has gone well and you can't possibly do just one more take, wrap it up. Be sure to schedule a possible date for re-takes before everyone leaves the set. You probably won't need to, because you got everything you needed, right? It's always possible that a client will request a change after you shoot. If all goes well and changes aren't necessary, the scheduled re-take day gives you a chance to follow up with your actors and team-members and tell them you won't need re-takes after all.
 
Next time: What to do with the video you've just shot 
 

 

About the Author:
 
William A. Collins Jr. is the Creative Director for Multimedia Development at Learning Evolution. An honored graduate of San Diego State University, Will has a B.F.A. with emphasis in Graphic Design. Will infuses the entire creative department at Learning Evolution with the ideal blend of art and science. He brings a professional, abstract and friendly demeanor to all his work. Will enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife Carolyn and their one year old darling daughter, Molly Jean.
 
About Learning Evolution:
 
Learning Evolution is a recognized leader in providing best of class customized eLearning and performance improvement solutions available to clients on their Learning Management Systems and Portals. In addition to eLearning services, Learning Evolution provides in-house video and audio production facilities and expertise.
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Question of the Week

Question: Can I Force Users to Complete Captivate Lessons in Order?

 

 
We are putting together Captivate training courses that will consist of multiple modules. We would like each module to have a pre and post test. We need to have a results page after each quiz and a total of all quizzes at the end of the entire training program. If the subject fails the post quiz we want them to review the material again before heading to the next module. Is this possible? 
 
Answer
 
If your Captivate lessons are going to be individual projects, including the quizzes/assessments, your best bet is to use a Learning Management System (LMS) that features lesson prerequisites and lesson ordering (I cannot imagine an LMS that doesn't offer both of these features standard). For instance, in my LMS, I can force the learner to take specific lessons in order. In addition, I can set it up so that if the learner doesn't pass a test, they cannot move to the next lesson until they take a previous lesson (and then take, and pass, the same test.
 
While you can set up much of this in Captivate using branching links to other projects, it really works best if handled through an LMS (especially if you need to track user success/fail rates and award certificates).
 
Got a question you'd like answered? Email me.
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Link of the Week

FrameMaker 8.0.3 Patch Now Available

 

The FrameMaker 8.0.3 patch is now available. According to Adobe, the patch (8.0p276) can only be applied on top of FrameMaker version 8.0.2 (8.0p273).
 
Here are some of the features/fixes found in the patch:
  • DITA conrefs get resolved properly
  • Extended characters do not have a preceding space when using Arial Unicode MS font.
  • Catalogs sort properly.
  • Use of page range in Index does not randomly add question marks left and right in the generated index file.
  • The NextPfgTag is correctly applied when pressing Enter at the beginning of the line. 

For more information about the new features found in the patch, click here. 

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Adobe Captivate: Text Entry Box Buttons

I've had this problem sent to me via email several times in the past few months so I felt it warranted an explanation here…
 
Here's the scenario: You want to add a Text Entry Box to your Captivate simulation and allow users to type something into a field within a dialog box; and then allow them to either press [enter] on their keyboard or click the OK button to close the dialog box.
 
If I was to approach this challenge logically, I'd go ahead and insert a Text Entry box (Insert > Text Entry Box) on a slide. On the Text Entry Box tab, I'd type the correct entry into the Correct entries field.
 
Text Entry Box showing the correct entry
 
Then I'd use the shortcut keys area of the dialog box to attach a keyboard shortcut to the Text Entry Box. In the picture below, Enter is set as the shortcut.
 
Shortcut key attached to a Text Entry box
 
It's at this point that many Captivate developers go wrong. As I said at the outset, I've received several emails where developers also want to allow users to click a button (like the OK button) or press the [Enter] key. Again, following logic, they choose Insert > Button and add a transparent button onto the slide. Then they simply drag the button over the image of the OK button. Done! Not!
 
Upon previewing the slide, developers then discover that they can either type in the Text Entry Box or click the OK button (without typing anything in the Text Entry Box), but not both. Huh? What gives?
 
The problem isn't really a problem. Captivate has already assumed that you might want a clickable button on the same slide as a Text Entry Box (that works with the Text Entry Box). Curious how to get this "companion button" to appear and work with a Text Entry Box? Read on…
 
Show the properties of the Text Entry Box (you can right-click the box and choose Properties). On the Options tab, select Show button and then click OK. 
 
Show Button selected
 
In the picture below, you can see the button that goes with the Text Entry Box (it's the one that says submit) and the OK button you'd like users to be able to actually click. The final trick will be to make the button transparent so move it into position.
 
Text Entry Box button and the OK button
 
Show the properties of the submit button (you can right-click the button and choose Properties). Change the Button type to Transparent, change the Frame width to 0 and the Fill transparency to 100. (You can also attach a shortcut key for good measure.)
 
Submit button made transparent
 
Preview your work. You should be able to type text into the Text Entry Box and either press [Enter] or click the OK button.
 
Nice!

 

Do you have a Captivate production problem that's making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.
 
 
Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.
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Ground Floor Video Production for eLearning and Web Delivery

by William A. Collins Jr.

The following is a three-part series for the beginning to intermediate eLearning content developer. It’s designed to teach, from the ground up, how to add video to content for eventual delivery on the world wide web.

Part One: Setting Up for Success

As the Creative Director for Multimedia Development at Learning Evolution, I’ve been involved in every aspect of developing graphic content for eLearning for several years. I’ve learned quite a bit from both knowledgeable colleagues and old-fashioned trial and error. The lessons I have learned throughout my career can be boiled down into good practices and an up-front acceptance of the following basic work flow processes. It is my hope that this three-part series will help you quickly learn the ropes of video production, as well as integrate dynamic video content with your eLearning projects.

Let’s face a simple fact. People like video. It’s dynamic, it’s colorful and it grabs people’s attention. Learners are expecting video more and more as bandwidths and budgets grow steadily larger. The sooner we get on this particular wagon, the sooner you can meet those needs.

Earmark a project…

Now that you’ve decided to do some video, you need to earmark a project for it. I would recommend doing something on your own (you really don’t want to use a client as a guinea pig). Is there something that you have been wanting to do in a personal context for a while? Is there some pro bono work you’ve been meaning to do for that local charity? Do you want to try your hand at something a little off the beaten path? Now is the time to do it. Pick a project, something small, and get going. You don’t need to do anything at this point aside from earmark the project… I’ll get to project specifics later. The important thing now is to start thinking about a particular project as a video project; this will allow you to add it to your scheduling and will help solidify it in your work flow.

Get the studio ready…

Most video work that makes it into eLearning is shot in a studio (as opposed to shot on location, although a lot of this will translate to that anyway), so I’ll start there.

"Talking Head" videos are commonly requested by clients; the format allows a manager or supervisor at the company to "personally" welcome learners. "Talking Head" videos are usually no more than a few minutes long–a perfect scenario to use for your project.

The studio needs to be a room in which you can control the lighting and sound. Not everyone can afford to dampen, soundproof, and dedicate an entire room for video, but you do need to find a nice quiet place that you can dedicate to video for the length of the shoot, or at least for a few hours for our intro video. Ideally, you want a place that can be shut off from the outside world for the entire length of the shoot. It’s good to have a door that you can close (put a RECORDING IN SESSION sign on the outside; if nothing else it will make you feel fancy) and walls that aren’t too echoey. To test for echoes, record something on your "room" and listen to it closely with some good headphones to see if you get echoes or hisses which might need to be addressed. Also, make sure the room has no windows (if there are windows, can they be easily covered?).

Hardware…

Let’s look at the hardware requirements. You’ll need a camera, a tripod, a microphone, some lights and a set.  "That sounds expensive, Will," you might say. Well, it doesn’t have to be. Remember that you are looking at an eventual web delivery here, so the video can’t be high definition anyway.

While it is true that high-fidelity cameras capture raw footage that is easier to deal with in the post-production environment because it makes it much easier to key out colors, for example, you can certainly do excellent, high caliber work with a mini-DV camcorder. If you won’t be keying out a background, just make sure the background you do shoot looks great.

Try and find a good tripod–you want your camera to be very stable.

As for the microphone, I wouldn’t recommend using the microphone that is built into the camera (even in an expensive HD camera); they are almost always tinny and pick up too much ambient noise.

For your purposes, you need a decent quality omni-directional lapel microphone. You can get one for a hundred bucks or so, and you really shouldn’t skimp on this step as your audio quality is very important. The microphone can be attached to the camera directly, or via wireless transponders which I heartily recommend (although they will, of course, cost you extra money).

You will also need some lights. Remember that you are recording audio with the video, so photography lights with fans won’t work well. Remember to get enough lights to light the subject (without too much shadow) as well as the background. If you are planning on keying out a background, pay special attention to making sure the background is evenly lit. (You might want a couple pieces of white foam core which you can use on the fly to bounce light where you need it.)

The Set…

The set is relatively simple. Will the subject be sitting behind a desk like a nightly newscaster? If so, you need a desk and a chair. Most of my subjects are shot standing, in which case you really don’t need anything else. Just make sure to direct your subjects properly so that they don’t sway–a common problem in first-time videos.

The Software…

Let’s look at some of the necessary software. Windows has a program called Windows Movie Maker, and every time I tell people that it’s free and already on their XP system, they don’t believe me. You also need a good piece of editing software, like Adobe Premiere (which will import your raw video footage).

If you have Adobe After Effects you will be able to add a lot of fun motion effects to your video in addition to letting you key out colors, but you don’t necessarily need it.

Likewise, companies like Digital Juice sell tons of reasonably priced, neat effects and graphics to augment your videos and really help them look professional without adding much time to your process.

You also want a dedicated audio editing program such as the excellent Adobe Audition (which I use almost exclusively) or you can get by with a free application like the very capable Audacity.

Finally, you will need encoding software to get your video ready for the web. There are many options, but the standard for eLearning is the Flash Video Encoder.

Setting things up…

Set the camera on the tripod so that you are shooting the background at the proper angle. If you are shooting a chroma key cloth hanging on a wall, make sure you are shooting it at a right angle, for instance. If you are shooting a drapery-type background, make sure it looks good in your viewfinder.

Now you need a pal to step in about halfway between the camera and the background. Make sure you adjust the tripod to shoot the subject head-on and level. Have your pal sit in the chair or stand on a tape mark, and if the subject is going to be standing, make sure your pal approximates the same height as your subject.

Look through the viewfinder and you’ll know right away if you’re going to be alright. While you do this step, mic your pal up with a lapel microphone and attach it to the camera. Go ahead and shoot some tests and have your pal read a page or two from a magazine, as you want a good cross section of pops and hisses in her speech so that you can level your inputs on the camera.

Shoot a few rounds…

Shoot a couple rounds of tests so you can import some sample footage to your editing station to see how things look and sound. Note the things you like and dislike, and make some more tests.

Try to change only one or two things between tests so you know exactly how certain changes affect your footage. Once you have some test footage you like, take a few minutes to document how you have things set up. Take some pictures to refresh your memory; put down tape x’s on the floor where you have things like light. You can do an overhead sketch to show things like angles of lights.

Once you feel comfortable here, you are ready for the next step: Scripts, Subjects and Shooting.

Next week: Scripts, Subjects and Shooting.

About the Author:

William A. Collins Jr. is the Creative Director for Multimedia Development at Learning Evolution. An honored graduate of San Diego State University, Will has a B.F.A. with emphasis in Graphic Design. Will infuses the entire creative department at Learning Evolution with the ideal blend of art and science. He brings a professional, abstract and friendly demeanor to all his work. Will enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife Carolyn and their one year old darling daughter, Molly Jean.

About Learning Evolution:

Learning Evolution is a recognized leader in providing best of class customized eLearning and performance improvement solutions available to clients on their Learning Management Systems and Portals. In addition to eLearning services, Learning Evolution provides in-house video and audio production facilities and expertise.

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Find/Change Improvements in Adobe InDesign CS3

by Barbara Binder

In my 20+ years of laying out publications, I’ve learned a series of lessons:

Lesson One: People preparing documents for me to place into a page layout program add some very wacky things to their files. Besides being unable to resist formatting their word processing files (even though they hired me to format their files for them), they also add all sorts of double spaces, triple spaces, tab space space tab sequences, tabs in the middle of paragraphs, hard returns in usual places, and on and on. 

Lesson Two: Whatever strange thing someone is putting in their files, they tend to do it consistently.

Lesson Three: Nobody listens when I explain how I want the files to be prepared. Or people pretend to listen, and then do their own thing anyway.

So what’s a girl to do? Accept the files the way they are submitted, and then run a series of Find/Change sequences on them to clean them up and get them ready for my formatting. This works in just about any page layout program, from FrameMaker to QuarkXPress to InDesign. However, InDesign CS3 has added some particularly clever features to the Find and Change dialog box that really save some time.

Here are three of my favorites:

  1. Multiple Space to Single Space. In lieu of running a series of searches to weed out all extra spaces, I can now just pick this one preset. The Find What line looks very scary, so just don’t look too closely. Basically, that string of characters is searching for multiple spaces of any kind (spacebar spaces, tabs, non-breaking spaces, etc.). Run the search and poof! All extra spaces are gone.

    2. Multiple Space to Single Space

  2. Multiple Return to Single Return. Another preset, this one pulls out all the extra hard returns.

    3. Multiple Return to Single Return

  3. Remove Trailing Whitespace. Trailing whitespace refers to one or more spaces at the end of a paragraph, between the final punctuation and the hard return. Most of the time these spaces don’t cause any problems, but sometimes they don’t fit on the same line as the punctuation and they force a new line or even a new page. For long documents, this can be a real nightmare.

Here’s my workflow: place all the files into my InDesign layout. Open the Find/Change dialog box from the Edit menu. Select each of these three queries in succession from the Query menu at the top of the dialog box, while setting the Search parameter to Document, so that you can clean up all the files at one time. Change All.

Next week: More on Find/Change to streamline your workflow.

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and was recently recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide for 2007. Barb will be your trainer for our virtual Adobe FrameMaker 8 and InDesign CS3 classes.

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More Advice On Recording Audio

Last week I ran an article about the best microphones to use for recording audio in Adobe Captivate. At that time I asked for comments from readers of this newsletter. Here are a few of the responses:

From Tina Silverstein, Course Designer, Alameda County Office of Education:

First of all, I second the recommendation for the BlueMic Snowball microphone. When you see the microphone, there is no question about how it got its name. I’ve heard people with professional audio experience comment on the good quality of the audio when using the Snowball microphone.

It has been my experience that the quality of audio when recording via a laptop is not as good as when recording via a desktop computer. When using a laptop, the microphone seems to pick up the laptop’s "internal sounds," probably due to the fact that we tend to be very close to the laptop when recording. I ran some tests recording narration using a desktop and laptop with the same microphone (within minutes of each other). The quality of the audio recorded into the laptop was definitely inferior.

From Mary E. Hughes:

Here are two audio accessories that I have found to help improve audio quality by either saving time or increasing voice quality when recording:

I purchased Harlan Hogan’s Portabooth for about $150. Hogan also provides instructions to make your own sound proof box in which to house your microphone. The sound proof box keeps out feedback and other noises as well as creates a rich, full and consistent sound. As its name implies, the Portabooth is portable for recording offsite.

Another accessory I use is a pop blocker that I purchased from a music store for about $20. This screen goes in front of the microphone and eliminates post-editing clean up of plosive ‘p’ and ‘b’ sounds when they cause a burst of volume in the audio recording.

Got any more suggestions or comments about this topic?

Please send me your emails and I’ll be happy to post your responses here.

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Grammar Workshop: Commas with Years and States in Dates and Addresses

by Jennie Ruby

A comma can act alone as a separator, and a comma can be part of a pair of commas setting something off. But when one of a pair of commas for setting off loses its partner, that is just wrong. An example I have been hearing of and seeing in business writing is the pair of commas that surround the year in a three part date and the pair of commas that surround the state or country. Here are some examples of this error:

  • The seminar will be held on June 4, 2008 at the conference center.
  • She traveled to Springfield, MA in the spring and to Falls Church, VA in the fall.

In these sentences there should be a comma after 2008 and commas after MA and VA. A three-part date, containing the month, the day, and the year, requires commas before and after the year. Confusion occurs because if you state only the month and year, you do not need commas: This is being written in May 2008. You also do not need commas with military or European style dates, where the day is placed before the month: The class will be given 4 June 2008.

There is no excuse for dropping the comma after the state or country. When you mention Avignon, France, or maybe Athens, GA, the country or state is really parenthetical, and really needs that second comma.

Note: I do hope to meet many of you online for the Essentials of Grammar online class I’ll be hosting next month (June 4 and 5, 2008).

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

Want help with a grammar issue? Email us your troubles and we’ll turn Jennie loose!

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Adobe FrameMaker vs. Adobe InDesign!

Which of These Powerhouse Print Publishing Applications is Right for You?

by Barbara Binder

You’ve been producing publications in Word for years, but are finding that your files are just getting too complicated and difficult to handle. You are ready to make the move to a professional page layout program and turn to Adobe Systems, the world leader in publications software. Adobe offers two programs specifically for publishing multi-page documentation: FrameMaker 8 and InDesign CS3. Which one do you choose?

The two programs share a number of features. For instance:

  • Both allow you to design the page structure with master pages, including the ability to pull live data off the page to display chapter and section headings for quick reference
  • Both programs support paragraph styles and character styles to make quick work of text formatting. If tables are prevalent in your publications, you’ll be glad to know that both programs offer table styles to quickly and uniformly lay out your tables.

So how do you determine which program to purchase and use for your work?

InDesign excels at:

  • Shorter, multi-story publications such as brochures, flyers, newsletters and magazines
  • InDesign is chock-full of high-end typography controls such as automatic ligatures, tracking, kerning, glyphs, baseline shift, hanging punctuation, drop-caps, and more
  • FrameMaker can produce multi-story pubs like InDesign, but creating this kind of document is it is very cumbersome in FrameMaker

FrameMaker excels at:

  • Laying out long, multi-chapter publications
  • With the strong and flexible numbering options, you can make quick work of table, figure and section numbering
  • You can add cross-references, equations, conditional text (for multi-version documents), all sorts of hypertext links, and user variables (for ever-changing product names and numbers).

Adobe states that InDesign has "robust" long document support. It does have some of the features mentioned above, but in my opinion, it InDesign falls short for the really long, complex technical documents.

If you are a technical writer, working on product documentation, I’d steer you towards FrameMaker. For the rest of you, the wide and varied features of InDesign will probably be a better fit. Or do what I do, buy both and then you can chose the best fit for each individual job!

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and was recently recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide for 2007. Barb will be your trainer for our virtual Adobe FrameMaker 8 and InDesign CS3 classes.