moving + pasting blocks of text -educational app

[therickman]

Hello to you all ,
my former ( mmf 1.5 ) login name was ericturpin.

Well I'm working on an educational app and I'm trying to figure out a way to make a fill-in-the-blanks activity where the student can select a block of text and paste it in a blank in an incomplete text.
Additionally, on the teacher side, teachers could select blocks of text from a source text and the app would build the fill-in-the-blank activity.
Any suggestions / help / tutorials / examples much appreciated !!
By the way, if there's an educational forum , I would be glad to join, as in the former mmf 1.5 forum <img src="/center/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

[Sarah]

It depends whether you have multiple blanks in the text or just one. If you just have one, you could have the text as a Rich Edit object with, say, 10 spaces underlined for a blank.

I've done a simple example. For more blanks, you'd need to think about whether they have to fill in the blanks sequentially, or whether they can just dot about all over the text, pasting the end one first, then a middle one etc.

http://clickteam.com/center/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/9240/an/0/page/0#Post9240

[therickman]

thanks for the example <img src="/center/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I'm going to take a look at it right now

[therickman]

so thanks again. I've looked at your example. The activity I'm planning to do would involve multiple blanks ( for instance : asking students to add verbs in a paragraph ) ; typically the student would have the ability to complete the text in whatever order he'd please, providing the final text "matches" the solution ( the teacher will have to make sure that there's just ONE possibility , or accept variations )

In some commercial apps, I've seen the possibilty for the student to actually move a block of text with the mouse ( as if it were an object ) then paste it ( by clicking ) in the area of his choice. I'd like to reproduce that too.

[Sarah]

I don't see a simple way to do all that <img src="/center/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> Take a look at the latest updated example for some clues, though.

Problems to overcome:
1) Unless you program the functionality of the rich edit box yourself in an extension, it remains a window - on top of ordinary strings. So you can't move an ordinary string with a transparent background over it. I've dealt with this in the latest example by using a static string - but this has to have a background colour, so the effect isn't perfect, even over a plain background.

2) For multiple blanks, you'll need to detect when the user releases the mouse key. Using the Y value of the mouse, you'd calculate which line of the rich edit object is nearest the mouse. As this involves main window size, rich edit window size, font size, character size - it is no small task. Ideally, Yves could be persuaded to add a function - caret position from (Xmouse, Ymouse)- but I don't see this happening in the next week or two <img src="/center/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

3) Once you have the caret position at which the user 'drops' the text - you need to calculate which blank is nearest. (Find next, find previous etc). You'd also need to decide if they actually have to click on the blank itself, or within a certain margin of error.

So - as you see, it is not a small thing you are asking for <img src="/center/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

[Sarah]

If the ControlX object was ported, it might be possible to get caret position on mouse drop...

[therickman]

thanks a lot for your suggestions ! I'll keep them in mind and hopefully I'll find a way out. if I do, I'll share my findings on the forum <img src="/center/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

[therickman]

Hello,
I'm still using the demo version of mmf2 ( fews days left, I 'm afraid ) but it seems that with the static text object, you ca&amp;n actually move text OVER the formatted text or rich edit object. So moving a block of text is possible...as for pasting it, I haven't tried yet, but it might work...if there's just one blank.
BTW I've come across what seems to be a bug : if you give a movement ( mouse controlled ) to the static text object and want to trigger this movement during runtime ( so that , after a condition , you can move it with your mouse ) , well , the cursor disappears right when the frame starts...maybe wer're not supposed to assign movements to this "static" object...but I've made it move by making it follow the mouse ( set position to x mouse /y mouse ) <img src="/center/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />