You may be aware that we've recently added the facility to embed an image or a video to appear alongside textivate activities?
(No? Here's some info about embedding videos. And this post is about embedding an image.)
Well, it occurred to us that you could add a parallel text to a textivate resource and have this appear alongside your activities. This would allow for all sorts of possibilities. e.g. guided translation & find the French / Spanish / German etc
We've now incorporated all of these extra features into a new "Extras" tab.
To add a parallel text click the "Extras" tab and add your parallel text to the "parallel text" box:
What this actually does is adds some extra formatted text to your text in the "Show all" text box.
When textivate detects this formatted text it adds the following "extra text" icon...
...to the top right of the menu screen and all activity screens. Simply click on this to access the additional text.
Here are a couple of links to a simple resource with a parallel text:
- The menu screen. Click the button to view the parallel text.
- The menu screen with the text already showing. (Click the close text button to close it).
Note that you can click around all of the activities and the extra text stays out on the left (or at the top) of the screen.
Here's an embedded activity example. Click on the "extra text" icon to open the activity along with the extra text.
That's all there is to it.
Adding / editing the parallel text data manually (ADVANCED)
Of course, you can add the formatted text manually, using the "Show all" text box. Here's how:
After your text and/or match data, and before any sequence information, add the following tags:
###startextra###
Your extra text info here...
###endextra###
Anything that appears between these tags is treated as an additional text which can appear in a separate text window on the left or at the top of the screen.
That's the basics. Now for a couple of extras.
You can also use the following tags within the ###startextra### and ###endextra### tags:
-
###match:showtext###
This instructs textivate to show the main text (the one for your textivities) along with all match activities. This means that you can do really cool things such as give students a vocab translation activity (e.g. using the empty / no letters screen) with the original text to refer to. See this example :o)
Obviously this only works if you have a text+match resource. -
###text:showmatch###
This is the opposite of the previous tag. It means that the matching list will be displayed alongside the text-based textivities. -
###match:none###
Means that no extra text appears next to match activities. -
###text:none###
No extra text appears alongside text activities.
You can combine these (as long as the combination makes sense), with or without an additional text.
The following resource includes an extra text + a ###match:showtext### tag. This means that the specified extra text appears along with text activities and the main textivity text appears along with match activities. It's a link to the home page, so that you can see how the text is put together:
https://www.textivate.com/djjjn1 - (Then click on the textivate now button to get to the menu screen, then click the "extra text" icon, then try clicking on the various activities to see what happens to the extra text.)
Good, eh?