Sophie
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Redefines the notion of a book to include rich media, reader feedback and conversation within a networked environment. Sophie emerged from the desire to create an easy-to-use application that would allow users to combine text, images, video, and sound quickly and simply, but with precision and sophistication.
There are three main parts of the Sophie interface: the book desktop, the left flap, and the right flap. The book desktop is the gray area in the center of the Sophie window.
Flaps are the things that stick out on the left and right side of the Sophie window; you can adjust the size of the flaps by dragging the margins back and forth. Each flap has several tabs in it, which can be selected by clicking the tab name. Most tabs contain more than one palette. Palettes can be lists of things used in Sophie (like all the movies in a book) or tools (like the spellchecker). The content of flaps, tabs, and palettes can be hidden by clicking the title of the flap, tab, or palette. The timeline flap, which is hidden in the screenshot above, can be opened to show the timeline workspace.
The leftmost tab in the book tab bar above the book desktop will minimize all open books and show the book desktop behind them. A tab will appear next to this Book Desktop button for every book that is open in Sophie; in this screenshot, "My New Book" is open. If you click on the "Show Preview" button in the status bar of a book window, a preview of the book will be generated; it will have its own tab in the tab bar (with a name like "Preview of My New Book"), and you can switch back and forth between the book and its preview.
Sophie has menu bars, but they're not used as often as the flaps or halos and HUDs. When Sophie is running on a Mac, the menu bars appear in the usual place - at the top of the screen - rather than at the top of the Sophie window.
Most elements of Sophie's interface have tool tips: if you leave your mouse over something, text will appear to tell you what it is called and possibly what it does.
Sophie's appearance can be changed: if you select one of the entries under the Skins entry in the menu bars, you can give Sophie a different look and feel. This changes are minor at this point, but they will be more substantial in the future.
Sophies users are interested in creating robust, elegant, networked texts without having programming knowledge or training in the use of more complex tools such as Flash.
Sophie is a useful tool designed to help you create and view rich media content in a networked environment.
Working with media
Sophie can import a wide variety of media. Small files can be either embedded (saved as part of the book) or linked (linked from the book, but not saved in the book): you're presented with a choice of this when you import media. The default varies: large media (where the files are larger than 4 Mb) are linked by default, while small media are embedded by default. This behavior can be changed in the file dialogue box.
Sophie Features:
1. Sophie Author allows users to create complex networked multimedia documents without specialized training.
2. Sophie Reader allows readers to read Sophie books in a browser without downloading a separate application.
3. Comment frames allow easily constructed spaces for discussion inside of books.
4. Browser frames allow embedding fully functional web browsers in book pages.
5. Sophie can import, embed, and export PDF files.
6. Easy to use embedded books: Sophie books can open inside other Sophie books.
7. Frame-based timelines present an easy way to create animations.
8. Sophie Server allows uploading, managing, and downloading books on a server.
9. Sophie Server allows simultaneous collaborative creation of books.
Sophie Reader is an application designed to read Sophie books. Sophie Reader behaves almost exactly the same way that Sophie Author does; however, there is no editing functionality. The Sophie Reader interface is therefore simpler than Sophie Author; there is no right or bottom flap, and there are no halos and HUDs.
Sophie Server allows you to share, upload, and download Sophie books through a webpage or inside Sophie Author or Reader. Sophie Server is an application that can be deployed on any web server allowing the creation of a social network of Sophie books and users. With this release, Sophie Server has user permissions, allowing control of who edits and reads a book. You can also preview a book online in a Java applet.
The license of this software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this word processing software.