User Guide
About the targeted audience.
About the hardware and software
minimum requirements.
About the use
of the mouse.
About the telematics features.
About the organisation of
the course.
About the colour code.
About notation.
About navigation.
About the menu bar.
About the <been hero>
markers.
About the glossary.
About the browser.
About exiting.
About the targeted audience.
This course is intended for either undergraduate students of Electrical
or Electronic Engineering, or continued education trainees with a minimum
background of digital circuit design. It is also expected that the user
is familiar with the Windows-95 operating system.
About the hardware and software minimum requirements.
This course requires a pentium based PC with a minimum of 16Mb RAM, 100Mb
of free hard disk, 1Mb of video RAM, 256 colours SVGA monitor and a two-button
mouse. No sound card is required in the current version as sound has not
been implemented.
About the use of the mouse.
For the normal actions the left hand side button is used. Only in very
specific cases such as explained in the<About the Glossary>entry, the
right hand side button must be used. If you are using a three button mouse,
the middle button is always disabled.
About the telematics features.
A <modem> option has been included in the menu bar to provide a minimum
of telematics capabilities to the students. It includes the posibility
to contact the tutor by e-mail using NetScape and receive support from
him either by e-mail or through a NetMeeting session that the student can
start just by clicking on the appropriate button. It also includes a direct
link to the MODEM Virtual Campus using the Netscape browser.
About the organisation of the course.
The course consists of five independent but logically sequenced chapters.Each
chapter is structured in a set of sections preceded by a general introduction
and culminated by general conclusions. Specific introduction and conclusion
for every section are also provided. Each section includes at least one
tutorial part. Some specific sections include <animation> or <exercise>
parts and a simulation part or a combination of them, depending on the
nature of the topic being covered. When the user has gone through the tutorial
part, three buttons become visible with self explanatory text allowing
either reviewing the tutorial, visiting the animation or exercise, or entering
the simulation part. Whenever inside the animation or the simulation environment,
the consulting style remains the same, i.e. at the end of each, the three
buttons will appear permitting either to review or to jump to the two other
parts of the section. The animation sequence is intended to show structural
evolution to broadening the explanations previously provided. The simulation
sequence provides a deeper insight into the topic just presented. The review
exercise is not proposed for evaluation purposes but instead to help the
user to clarify potential misunderstandings. To avoid similarities with
a traditional book, course pages are not immediately filled upon entrance
but instead, in a step by step manner filled by the user via button clicks.
Text is typically located on the left hand side of the screen and electronic
diagrams on the right hand side. Text is displayed stepwise with suitable
highlighting in the diagrams. Additional information concerning the elements
of these diagrams is provided by entering the mouse in the corresponding
symbol.
About the colour code.
Black is used for the general presentation of the course, both for text
and for diagrams, and to display additional information either in textual
or in graphical form.In the Simulation Sequences, black is used to represent
"X", the unknown state.Red is used to highlight the most important aspects
of the topic being presented, text as well as diagrams, in this way establishing
a suitable correspondence between them. Red is also used on the diagrams
to denote a logic high level signal. Blue is used on the diagrams to denote
a logic low level signal. Green is reserved for "hotwords" i.e., for "clickable"
words connecting to related information. However, no hotword is implemented
in this version of de demonstrator.
About notation.
The complementary logic signal of Q is denoted Qn. Thus e.g., Ein is the
complementary logic signal of El.
About navigation.
The course starts on the <Main Menu> page which presents a general overview
of the structure of the course in terms of chapters. This page provides
direct access to each chapter, just by a mouse click on the corresponding
title. By locating the mouse over the title of a given chapter, a corresponding
introduction is displayed on the right hand side. By default, the initial
page of each chapter is set in "introduction" display mode. Then, locating
the mouse over a particular section makes the introduction of that section
to appear. Clicking on the <conclusion> button, toggles the mode to
"conclusion" and enables a quick overview of the most relevant notions
of each section. Again, a mouse button click on the title of a specific
section allows navigation inside the corresponding chapter. Classical navigation
buttons <Main Menu>, <Last Menu>, <Back>. <Previous> and <Next>
are provided. These buttons are disabled on pages where they play no part.
The <Back> button allows to go back to the page visited just before
the current page. The <Last Menu> button enables a quick return to the
introductory page of the chapter under study. It is worth pointing out
that the <Previous> and <Next> buttons only allow the user to navigate
within the sections of a given chapter. Even the Introduction and the Conclusion
of the given chapter remain unreachable from these buttons. In other words,
the <Previous> button will become disabled from the first section of
any chapter and similarly, the <Next> button will not be accessible
from the last section of any chapter. The Conclusion of every chapter is
only accessible from the corresponding presentation page. Even if access
to the different parts of this course is possible in any order, a sequential
mode of navigation is recommended, mainly for the first contact, in virtue
of the fact that each chapter is a prerequisite for the next.
About the menu bar.
The Menu Bar contains the basic <previous> and <next> navigation
capabilities, but some functionalities are only available from here. First,
the only possibility to quit the course is through the <Exit> option
on the <File> Menu. A printing capability has been implemented to allow
paper copies of the chapters. The <print> menu item is disabled when
the user is elsewhere than in the core of the course. A copy option in
the <Edit> Menu allows to save paragraphs displayed during the tutorial
on to the system clipboard for pasting into the personal notebook which
can also be invoked from this menu. In the current version only text from
the tutorial parts can be copied, one paragraph at a time. A <history>
option is included in the <Help> menu to enable the user to trace back
his/her walk through the course. A <modem> option described above in
more detail has also been incorporated in order to provide telematics functionalities.
About the <been hero> markers.
When leaving a section, a yellow mark is made visible on that page to remind
the user it is a section already visited. Notice that the mark is made
even if the associated chapter has been only visited partially. When all
the sections of a given chapter have been visited, a <been hero mark
will appear at chapter level in the Main menu page. An option has been
included to reset the <been hero marks from the <Navigation Menu>.
About the glossary.
The glossary is provided as a separate book, strongly linked to the main
book. It includes diagrams, textual explanations and a summary list with
all concepts documented in the glossary. The summary list is implemented
in hypertext form to allow easy navigation inside the glossary. The glossary
can be explicitly invoked from the navigation window or indirectly, by
a RIGHT mouse button click on the symbols of the different diagrams presented
in the course. Exiting the glossary is done through the windows 95 standard
close-window icon. When the glossary has been closed, control returns to
the page from which it was invoked. In the current implementation of the
demonstrator, the glossary is not available.
About the browser.
The browser is a pallet of basic symbols intended for use with the schematic-capture
oriented exercises. The browser has to be invoked as many times as the
number of symbols required in a given schematic. The symbol is selected
by a mouse click. The pallet window is closed after the selection and the
symbol dropped on a specific location on the screen. Then, it can be dragged
and dropped at users' will. In order to get rid of wrong symbols picked
up from the browser, a trash bin is provided on the pages where schematic
capture is requested. Non required symbols must be thrown away on a one-by-one
basis as well. In this version of the demonstrator the browser is only
used in the excercise parts.
About exiting.
Exit from the course is possible from the <Exit> option of the <File>
menu or through the Windows-95 icon. Both procedures are totally equivalent.
