Lectora Extension/Plugin API?

bslack5361

Is this a thing? Is there an API for extending Lectora? Links to documentation of and the like would be appreciated if it is. Thanks for your attention.

pjackson2462

I would love to see one.

lsilver

Hi Benjamin - There's no API currently available. What kind of extensions were you looking to develop?

bslack5361

Two things have come to mind as I've been working with the application the last few months for IFPTI.

The first would be to allow for more control over the generated HTML, specification of IDs, maybe inclusion of CSS styling in the WYSIWIG. Right now, I can override sytles via class and some creative use of CSS selectors, but I can't preview it in Lectora proper and other users picking up my files would likely be confused by the application of CSS. I'm working as part of a team, so that's a concern. What I would like would be element layer control. I'm picturing a box placed on the page whose properties include what HTML tag to use for the "box" in question (div, span, custom, etc.), what ID to set, etc. It's attributes could use WYSIWIG to generate a style sheet, but that stylesheet would be open  to user control. Maybe a button that would open a CSS stylesheet snippet for that specific div, for example. Right now that's all hidden away from the user behind the WYSIWIG, likely to avoid complexity and convenience, but when it comes to specific control, that convenience becomes a hindrance.

The second would be for QC. The organization has fairly long Lectora documents, with many manually set links. There's no global way to interact with them. What I'm picturing is a "flow" plugin that would offer two bits of UI and functionality. The first, and easier to implement, would be a incoming and outgoing link collection, so that we could see what pages link into a given page and what pages a given page exists to. The second, would be a flow view of some sort, that would likely provide a directed graph of the document and allow for rerouting of links in a global fashion. For example, find all links that target page X and reroute them to Y. This would give QC the ability to at a glance see flow of the document and to make changes quickly and across multiple pages consistently.

That's my two ideas for the moment. I'm sure others will come to me.

-B