INSCRIPT: a courseware specification language

Abstract This paper presents a design (or script) language, named ‘Inscript’, which has been developed at the Dutch Open University to support the courseware production process in the design stage. The requirements which must be fulfilled by script languages are discussed and the language elements are presented with the help of an example. This example is worked out in a conventional, imperative style. To show the support for different design approaches, we have also worked out an example in object-oriented style. So far a total of 35 different courseware programs have been specified with Inscript. The experience gained up to now has been positive.