HTML to DVD player?

[JMuelver]

(Also posted to alt.html.witers on 4 March with no response to
date....)

I'm looking to take a set of HTML files (a tutorial or instructional
set) and convert it to run on one of those $89 DVD players -- no
computer, no browser, just the DVD player and its little 5-inch or 7-
inch screen. I see this as a very cheap delivery system for
instructional materials, like an ebook. What I'm trying to work with
is a series of explanatory topics with multiple-choice questions. Each
question could branch off to a different line of study, or could
simply branch to a generic "Sorry, wrong answer. Try again" page and
loop back for another choice.

Problem is, can DVD players handle the selection of links on a page?
And, for that matter, does the format support static pages? Does
anyone know of a conversion program for this sort of thing? My Google
searches have been unsatisfactory.

---- Jerry

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Problem is, can DVD players handle the selection of links on a page?
And, for that matter, does the format support static pages?

It has the concept of menus, such that one menu can take you through to
another, which could be used for what you describe, but I doubt there are
any tools that would help you convert from HTML to a DVD menu screen, as
the latter is primarily a graphical, not text-based medium.

An alternative you may wish to consider would be to ship your
documentation in HTML on an SD Card. If the WORM (Write Once, Read Many)
feature of DVDs is important to you, SD Cards have a write-protect notch
much like VHS and audio cassettes; by saving your files to the card and
then physically removing the notch, your data will become read-only. Most
PDAs and many new computers include an SD Card reader. USB SD Card readers
cost about £10.

For Windows users, you could even include a customised browser based on
either Gecko or MSHTML to display the pages, and auto-launch it using
autoload.ini. Users of PDAs and other operating systems would not be able
to use these features, but would be able to view the HTML pages using
their normal browsers.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!