Categorization

[Trevor Newell]

There's a few different routes you could use to complete this task. The first and most powerful way to go would be through a custom item. Custom items however have a higher learning curve than the other item types available from within MediaLab.

For more information on custom items, see the following link:
http://www.empirisoft.com/medialab/h...stom_items.htm

By utilizing the power of HTML and Java, you can create tools similar to the example provided in the following link:
http://www.empirisoft.com/support/showthread.php?t=540

Through the power of custom items, you could also create a list of items to be checked off from within a list. See the following link:
http://www.empirisoft.com/support/showthread.php?t=825

The second route you could head in would be through utilizing the power of the 'ranking' item type. The ranking item type could be used so that the user lists each item in a manner that they feel indicates a 'gradient' of similarity. The only problem with doing so is that the ranking feature only supports 12 items to be used at a time.

You may also want to try using the 'Essay' item type. The essay item type will allow for the user to list the items in any order or grouping manner that they like. If you do not have enough room to present each item that the user can select, you may want to have MediaLab open a Read Only notepad file and present it next to the MediaLab window.

Let me know if this helps out.

[eshaeffer]

I would be very interested to find out if someone has created a custom item to handle this task since the original post. This remains a useful experimental procedure and I would love to know if code exists to do it or, alternately, if this procedure will be part of an upcoming release of MediaLab. Thanks.

[jarvis24]

It strikes me that the multiple fill in the blanks sample that comes with MediaLab v2008 (in the custom items folder) could be modified pretty easily to do this. You would just need to add the text items you've listed here and increase the size of the text boxes--perhaps also making them multi-line (as opposed to having items separated with commas in the different boxes).