The ABox is a multi-purpose dialog box that can be used to provide a user with a list of topics, where each list contains one or more "slides" on that topic. The ABox is depicted below in a rough diagram:

[ Please forgive the crude ASCII graphics, but you are looking at the real ABox while reading this after-all ]

+--------------------------------------+

|+-----------+-+ +------------------+-+|

|| topic     |^| | slide field      |^||

|| list with | | | for PICT and     | ||

|| scrollbar | | | TEXT (styled too)| ||

||           | | | with scrollbar   | ||

||           | | | as required      | ||

||           | | |                  | ||

||           |v| |                  |v||

|+-----------+-+ +------------------+-+|

|                +------------------+  |

|                |  slide title STR |  |

| version info   +------------------+  |

| ^0^1^2^3       Play <<   >>      OK  |

+--------------------------------------+

                  prev & next buttons

Topics (and their respective slides within the topics) are just loose files within a predetermined folder, possibly organized
with subfolders. This folder (specified by the application programmer) is recursively walked to gather up a topic list, which is simply a list of files that contain TSAb resources (more on this later), and is then displayed in the left area of  the dialog box. This way we can create a poor-person's outline just by organizing the topic/slide files into folders and subfolders. Subtopics (and subfolders) are appropriately indented in the topic list. If a folder contains a file of the same name, the file is substituted for the folder name and displayed in the list where the folder would be.

When the user clicks either the "<<prev<<" or ">>next>>" buttons the previous or next slide in the current slide list is displayed. The buttons are appropriately disabled when at the start or end of a slide list. The left/right arrow keys are keyboard shortcuts for the previous and next buttons.

Additionally, the "play" button (or the spacebar, as a shortcut) will cause the slide's sound or controller-less movie to replay
(movies that have a controller already provide their own play button).

The up/down arrow keys will traverse the topic list.