In march, we had our LeActiveMath review meeting and the the AssemblyTool was one of the deliverables. One requirement stated that the user can drag anything into the AssemblyTool, be it a learning item or section from ActiveMath or any external item.

ActiveMath learning items are referenced by mbase identifiers. Upon an upload to ActiveMath, the system knows how to dereference them and how to display the items. To some extent, the system was a closed environment being able to display only OMDoc items. In introducing the dynamic item, it is now able to reference external URLs as well. And that’s the magic behind the AssemblyTool.

When thinking about a AssemblyTool demo for a review, Carsten Ullrich and I tried to come up with a good story line. So far, I showed the external dynamic link in action only by dragging pictures from other sites into the AssemblyTool. But then, the power of the web and of the link got us: We used ActiveMath’s search tool to get something about a “derivative”. In the scenario, we were not happy enough about the suggested items, so we searched for some other content at Wikipedia using a prepared link. This operation was successful, so we dragged the Wikipedia link into the AssemblyTool and a link to a picture as well. Then we searched for the same key word at Google, switched to videos, and found a lecture on derivatives at YouTube. Again, we took the link and dropped it into the AssemblyTool. Finally, we uploaded the book into ActiveMath and watched the result: In between our OMDoc learning items, the dynamic items referring to Wikipedia and YouTube appeared. Wow, that was a positive experience!