NYCPHP Meetup

[Kerem Tuzemen]

Another way would be to generate image files containing the text on the fly. 

Kerem

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: -sry 
  To: dev at lists.nyphp.org ; talk at lists.nyphp.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 7:18 AM
  Subject: [nycphp-dev] intro & content protection question


  Hiya listies,

  I'm cross-posting this to both the dev and talk lists, as I
  am not quite sure in which category this really belongs.

  I'm brand-spanking new to both PHP and mySQL, though
  I've been programming for a number of years (since about
  1985) and am based in C so I think PHP is going to be
  pretty easy to pick up. I've had exposure to SQL through
  Cold Fusion in the late 90s and the mySQL documentation
  makes it look pretty easy/straightforward, but I'm sure I'll
  have some basic questions about both aspects of the
  current design I'm working on once I get to coding. Until
  then, I'm still shaking out the bugs in the architectural 
  planning stage and need some help deciding how to 
  implement my design.

  Here's the deal. I am designing a thing (don't want to
  release too many details until the project is released)
  that best compares to the old SAT reading comprehension
  test with one difference: I don't want people to skip tests
  or skip around the reading/test sets out of order. This is
  not a problem, as I can just validate the user's position
  in the sequence and control their flow through the sets.

  There will be a total of 20 reading/test sequences with at 
  least one or two forms at the start of the process to collect 
  demographics and set up the user prefs. Again, all of this 
  seems pretty straightforward to me and is not my issue yet 
  (not until I start coding ;-))

  Okay, here's my question, I was originally thinking along
  the lines of doing this in Flash to protect the content of
  the reading tests (don't ask why, just accept I wanted to)
  from being lifted. If I dynamically generate the pages, the
  resulting content will be HTML that can just be saved and 
  walked off with by whomever views the pages. 

  The content of the reading tests is of value to me and I don't 
  want to present it in "liftable" text format. In Flash, the text 
  is part of the SWF file and cannot be saved easily (I do realize
  someone with enough motivation could manually retype the 
  content viewed and walk off with it but that's an awful lot of 
  effort to steal something publicly accessible for free, isn't it?) 

  Since I was planning on doing this in Flash, I planned on
  controlling flow through ActionScript to PHP and PHP 
  to mySQL. I also wanted to use the PHP/mySQL combo
  to allow users to stop the reading/test sequence and
  come back to it, as well as to set a variety of env vars
  (like colors, fonts, other fluff). 

  The more I think through the functional flow of this project,
  however, the more silly it seems to be involving Flash at all. 
  The only thing stopping me from keeping it purely PHP at 
  this point is how to protect the content at the point it appears 
  in the client browser. Is there any way to do this? Since PHP 
  parses and then returns HTML to the client, I don't see how 
  to make the page content not accessible via View | Source 
  or by saving the resultant page.  Ideas? Suggestions?

  Oh, one more kink in the works, one of the user prefs may
  be to view the reading sections in a language other than English,
  (i.e., read in a non-English language, take the test in English)
  and again, this is not hard--just have separate source files
  for the content of the reading part and insert whichever one
  based on the user pref). This is a LOT easier to do with PHP
  by just setting the CHAR-SET and displaying HTML than it 
  is to import non-English into Flash. This user pref may have
  to wait for a "rev 2" of this project ;-)

  ADthanxVANCE!

  -sry
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Sarah R. Yoffa
  http://www.sarahryoffa.com/
  sryBoston at hotmail.com
  "Stupid rules are meant to be changed, not broken."
        [-sry on sci.space.shuttle, c. 1993]
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------






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