Significant Layout Improvement in New eLAIX and ILIAS

At the last Unirep-Online project meeting we had a look at the new version of the OpenOffice extension eLAIX and how it supports new layout features of ILIAS 4. In the past, the strict DTD for ILIAS learning modules in ILIAS 3 reduced the layout options of learning modules to a basic set of semantic decorations like «Example», «Citation», «Remark» or «Additional». eLAIX version 2 supported these formats but ignored other formatting when exporting an OpenOffice document as ILIAS learning module.

With the new eLAIX version 3 and ILIAS 4 the options of formatting a document will increase enormously. With ILIAS 4, a user can define additional formats for paragraphs, texts a.s.o. The new eLAIX is using this feature to transfer every style sheet of an OpenOffice document to ILIAS where it is presented appropriately. You only need to define the style sheet in OpenOffice. All style sheet information will be transfered to ILIAS during the export and added as a new format within the learning module.

In our project Unirep-Online we are using this feature to create and use nested lists (with five and more levels), marginal notes at the left or right side of the text, and specific layouts for juridical documents (Unirep-Online is a project for exam preparation in law studies). But there are a lot more possible applications.

At the time being, eLAIX 3 is still under development. It will be released in sufficient time before the next ILIAS conference in Budapest where an eLAIX workshop is offered as well.