Director

It came to be used back in the days where multiple referees were needed for a bout, before electrical scoring devices.  There were often as many as five referees and judges presiding over a single match, and the head referee became known as the director to clearly distinguish him from the other officials.  Even though all the scoring has been machinized for decades, the term remains.

As you might guess from the name, Director uses a movie director metaphor. The objects you manipulate, which can images, animations, sounds and scripts, are refered to as the cast. They appear in a window called the stage and they are arranged and animated on the score. Director allows a huge number of different media types that can be embedded into a Shockwave presentation.

The scripting language incorporated in Director is called Lingo. Lingo seems to generate a lot of controversy, people either love it or hate it. It is a wordy scripting language that is light on symbols and operators; it was supposedly modeled closely around HyperTalk, the HyperCard scripting language. Director provides a window called the Message window, an interactive Lingo session useful for experimenting with the language.

As noted above, Director began life as a humble slideshow presentation tool. In the beginning, it competed with PowerPoint as a general purpose presentation program. In 1993, still before the Internet revolution, Director 4 shifted focus to true multimedia, graphics, animations, and sound as it jumped on the emerging interactive CDROM authoring bandwagon. The next major change was version 6, which reinvented Director as an Internet authoring tool. The latest version, 8.5, now adds the latest major feature, 3D graphics.

Di*rect"or (?), n. [Cf. F. directeur.]

1.

One who, or that which, directs; one who regulates, guides, or orders; a manager or superintendent.

In all affairs thou sole director. Swift.

2.

One of a body of persons appointed to manage the affairs of a company or corporation; as, the directors of a bank, insurance company, or railroad company.

What made directors cheat in South-Sea year? Pope.

3. Mech.

A part of a machine or instrument which directs its motion or action.

4. Surg.

A slender grooved instrument upon which a knife is made to slide when it is wished to limit the extent of motion of the latter, or prevent its injuring the parts beneath.

© Webster 1913.