This page is part of the documentation on the MOOseum Tools Project, a collaboration between Kalí Tal and ConnectionsMOO. The purpose of this project is to provide a suite of tools based on a museum metaphor to humanities scholars who are interested in integrating new media technology into their courses. The tools, currently under development, will be distributed freely as a suite, and will run on LambdaCore, JHCore and enCOre MOOs. If you are interested in beta testing these tools, contact Kalí Tal.
Items typed <inside angle brackets> should be typed without the brackets when you give commands on the MOO. For instance, if you saw the following command:
@create #624 named <name of your animatronic>
You would type:
@create #624 MyAnimatronicName
[The generic animatronic, created by Percival/Tari, 6/26/99. Questions, problems, bug reports to Percival/Tari.]
The generic animatronic makes a prepared speech when the user presses its button. The speech must be written on cue cards that are children of the generic cue card, #629 (see `help #629'[1] for assistance making and using cue cards). Animatronics will accept cue cards made by people other than the owner of the animatronic, so a group can collaborate on writing the speech for an animatronic. The animatronic will hold as many cue cards as you want to put in it.
If you want your own animatronic, make a child of the generic animatronic:
@create #624 named <name of your animatronic>
To describe your animatronic:
@describe <name of your animatronic> as <your description>
To hear an animatronic's speech:
press button on <animatronic name>
To put a cue card in an animatronic:
load <cue card name> in <animatronic name>
To remove a cue card from an animatronic:
unload <cue card name> from <animatronic name>
To remove all the cue cards from an animatronic:
empty <animatronic name>
To see the list of cue cards in an animatronic, in their current order:
cuecards in <animatronic name>
To set the order in which the animatronic will speak the text of the cue cards it contains:
order <animatronic name> is <cue card name> <cue card name> <cue card name> (etc.)
To fasten or unfasten an animatronic:
fasten <animatronic name>
unfasten <animatronic name>
Only the owner and designated users of an animatronic can fasten or unfasten the animatronic. Fastening an animatronic locks it so that no one but the owner and designated users can load, unload, empty, or reorder cue cards in the animatronic. Anyone on an animatronic's users list can unfasten the animatronic in order to change its speech.
To choose the volume level for an animatronic:
volume <animatronic name> is loud
or
volume <animatronic name> is quiet
If the animatronic's volume setting is "loud," everyone in the room with it will hear its speech. If the volume setting is "quiet," only the person who pushed the button on the animatronic will hear its speech. Only the owner of the animatronic and the people on its users list can change its volume.
To set the length of time an animatronic pauses between cue cards:
timing <animatronic name> is <number>
For example, if your animatronic is named "gorilla," the command `timing gorilla is 5' will cause the gorilla to pause approximately 5 seconds between the cue cards of its speech. Only the owner of the animatronic and people on its users list can set the timing of the animatronic.
To add or remove people from the users list of an animatronic:
@add-user <person> for <animatronic name>
@rm-user <person> for <animatronic name>
Only the owner can add and remove users for the animatronic.
To see the list of users for an animatron:
@users for <animatron name>
to set provenance:
@prov <object> is <text>
to clear provenance:
@prov <object> is
to set references:
@ref <object> is <text>
to clear references:
@ref <object> is
To change the "push button" feature on the animatronic, visit John DiLorenzo's tutorial.
*The provenance of an object is the object's story: dates, makers, owners, circumstances of its discovery, testing, information on how it came to the museum, etc. The provenance of a silver tea set might say something like, "Maker: Paul Revere, 1768. Commissioned by Mrs. Robert Johns as a wedding gift for her daughter Theresa Johns Smith. Purchased by the museum from the 1975 estate sale of Thomas Brown, great-great grandson of Theresa Smith."
**The references field of a MOOseum object is intended as a place for the owner of an exibit object to refer the viewer to further sources of information on subjects related to the object; the references on a silver tea set made by Paul Revere might refer the viewer to books or URLs about Paul Revere or about tea sets of the period.
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