Option to use hosted css/js

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Oscar Levin

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Jun 16, 2026, 5:18:03 PMJun 16
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I'm getting close on the SCORM builds so that they work in blackboard for assignments as well as the other LMS's.  One thing I've noticed though is that creating a scorm package of a single html page creates a zip file at over 14MB.  If I set this to be a portable build, that drops to about 130KB.  

Since these archives need to be uploaded to the LMS and might be emailed around to other instructors, it would be nice to not bundle all the JS in the archive.   A few options:
  1. Educate instructors to set portable="yes" in publication whenever they build a scorm file.
  2. Automatically set portable="yes" for scorm builds.
  3. Add a new publisher switch that prefers remote/hosted javascript and css, and make it's default with scorm be to use the hosted version
  4. Don't add a new publisher variable, but internally always use remote/hosted javascript for scorm.
1 and 2 are really not ideal, since the portable build also messes up interactives and annotated prefigures (and maybe some other things).  4 would be easiest, but while I'm touching the code, it would be relatively easy to add the new publisher variable.  

Thoughts?

Jason Siefken

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Jun 17, 2026, 11:53:04 AMJun 17
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I would vote for option 1.

I am generally not a fan of CDNs (jsdelivr was down yesterday) and when I upload something to my LMS I expect it to work for years to come, so I want fully contained setups. I also suspect that some people may try to use LMS quizzes in "locked down" environments that may block connections to external domains.

I do think we could make the option more discoverable, though. The CLI could ouput a warning if the bulded size is large (>2mb of JS + CSS assets?) explaining that setting `portable="true"` in the publisher file could reduce the size, and then linking to a relevant page in the Guide.

I would vote strongly against 3 and 4. Isn't the point of publisher files that you have multiple ones for different targets?
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Oscar Levin

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Jun 30, 2026, 1:51:53 AM (11 days ago) Jun 30
to PreTeXt development
Another use case for allowing a publisher to request cdn based javascript and css is for PreTeXt.Plus, since we don't want to be sending all the js between the build servers and hosts.  

What about a publisher variable, say `javascript="local|cdn"` with local as the default?

Jason Siefken

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Jul 6, 2026, 4:11:56 PM (5 days ago) Jul 6
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I would think javascript and css would be treated the same, either both local or both cdn. So perhaps a more general attribute name?
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