Many times, I am producing Authorware files that the client will be responsible for maintaining. With One Button Publishing, I can export my settings for the client to use. There's only one problem with this...When One Button publishing includes a file in the package, it "hard codes" the location to the directory on your machine.

One way to get around this is to use the $FileLocation token. Think of tokens as variables you can use in One Button Publishing. The $FileLocation token is exactly the same as FileLocation is in Authorware–the location of the .a6p file.

You can replace the portion of the file path that corresponds to FileLocation with the $FileLocation token, and when you export the settings, anyone will be able to import the OBP settings and have them work on his or her PC.

Steve Howard pointed out that when you have a lot of files to publish (for instance, an entire directory of graphics), changing the path to $FileLocation inside OBP can be very laborious, since OBP only allows you to change one file at a time.

He mentioned that you can open your exported settings in a text editor, such as Notepad, and do a global Find and Replace to replace your hard coded path with $FileLocation.

You can get a complete list of available tokens by right-clicking in any field that accepts a path. You may notice if you do this that there are tokens called $Token0-$Token9. These are for you to set up your own "variables" to point to custom locations on your own machine.
 

Before I went to EuroTAAC, I published a Tip on Multidimensional Lists. Subscriber Barbara Brown pointed out that the Authorware Help files are inaccurate when it comes to initializing multidimensional lists, and this slows many users down who might otherwise be ready to start using them.

The Help Files say:

When setting up a multidimensional list, you can initialize it in your code to have the specific number of dimensions that you intend to use. So if you want to use a two-dimensional list consisting of four pairs of elements, you can use any of the following:

list := [ [,],[,],[,],[,],[,] ]
...

This will result in an "invalid list assignment" error when you try to close the calculation. The correct syntax for this method is:

MyList := [ [],[],[],[],[] ]

However, I prefer to initialize each dimension of the list before I fill it, so that I always have exactly the number of dimensions I need. When I use a multidimensional list, my code looks more like this:

MyList := []
repeat with X := 1 to NumberOfSections

MyList[X] := []
--code to fill the "inner" list

A good many people have subscribed since the last Tip of the Week, and you might be wondering where your newsletter has been. The truth is, I was at EuroTAAC enjoying the wonderful weather in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

My thanks to Steve Howard, the driving force behind EuroTAAC, and Mark Tomlinson of AC&S, who made it possible to have EuroTAAC in such a lovely spot.

Amy is bitten by a swan

This was one of the best Authorware conferences I've had the opportunity to attend. The small size meant that everyone really had a chance to get to know one another. The sessions were incredible. Ron Lubensky's Accessibility session and Chris Swenson's session on database design were particularly good.

Dan Clinger and Dave Brunswick express hopes for Peace and Beer

The innovative Wireless LAN made it possible for attendees to keep in contact with their offices and meant that presenter files were uploaded to the server almost immediately after the presentation. I was able to download most of the presenter files before I left the conference.