Re: Re: [seul-edu] Grade input software

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

On Sat, 11 Dec 1999, Bill Tihen -- TECHNOLOGY wrote:
 
> Thoughts:
> I guess it I went browser based I would have to do the 
> whole thing in javascript (which I am not found of) or 
> applets (more fond of -- but would really much more 
> enjoy a cgi -- is there anyway to run a cgi on a 
> workstation?) How do I get a browser to access a 
> filesystem? I guess -- certainly hope that this only 
> works if the browser program is on the local machine.  
> Browsers -- if I remeber correcly don't print the data 
> in html forms (makes javascript a problem).  Only 
> Netscape 4.6 and beyond prints java applets.  Applets 
> would be very slow on our school computers and on many 
> people's home computers I don't think it would even run.
> 
Well, CGI runs on servers only, so far as I know.  I don't think you'd need to
do javascript, though.  Take a look at this:

http://www.voicenet.com/~gray/sqsh.html

This could be used on a Linux box to present well-formed queries and updates to
your SQL database.  You'd have to write some code to take your input from a web
form, run it through ispell to check the spelling (after using sed or something
similar to remove the MS Word special characters), present the text back to the
user for spelling correction, re-accept the corrected text, and then hand it
off to sqsh to post to the database.  Does that sound reasonable?  As to the
reporting problem and how to handle non-networked computers, you might be able to
whip up some variant on the CGI that would accept input from a file on a floppy. 
You could then run that program from the Linux console.  I won't presume to
advise how to answer the non-technical problems.

-- 
Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
dloss@suscom.net     those in authority off their guard and give
(570) 326-3987       you the opportunity to commit more.
                        Mark Twain