Re: [seul-edu] Consolidated gradebook effort

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@jump.net>]

Hi Hilaire - 

All I really have to show at this point is a preliminary Glade file -
you can grab it at http://lager.dyndns.org/gradebook/gradebook.glade.gz
- and even that's not complete.  I've just been brainstorming a lot.  I
have a source tree that just builds the GUI, and adds the GTKsheet to
one of the notebooks (see below).  Not much, I'm afraid.

Here's the basic idea though - a two-paned application, with a tree on
the left side.  The tree hierarchy will follow the session/course/class
hierarchy, i.e.

Top
 Fall 1999
   Freshman English
     Period 1
     Period 2
   Intro to Brit Lit
     Period 3
     Period 4

Etc...

When the user selects part of the tree, the right pane changes to allow
the next level of the tree to be edited - for instance, selecting
"Freshman English" lists all of the class names, and allows the user to
add, edit, or delete any of the Freshman English classes.

When you select an actual class, you get a notebook with a few tabs -
one to edit students, one to edit tasks, one which contains a
spreadsheet of Students/Grades (this is where the grade entry takes
place - search Freshmeat for "GtkExtra" to get the widget) and a class
option tab.

That's about it for now.  :)  I'm trying to figure out how to handle the
data structures - I'd like to leave the parsed XML tree in place if
possible, but I'm not sure that's the best way to do it...

Regarding Python, I'm reluctant to add another unknown to the equation
(for me, anyway... I'm just gaining C proficiency, and learning another
language sounds daunting...) but that would certainly be an option. 
However, I think this could be done in such a way that a C/GTK program
could be ported to Windows with little trouble.  GTK 1.3 has native
Win32 support, and there are snapshots available.

I agree that the GUI should be distinct from the actual engines... I had
planned to do it that way.

My main sticking point is deciding on data structures to use, and how to
handle the XML parsing with libXML.

Also, trying to reconcile the features I need with how to implement them
in EduML - see my prior post on that (managing different grading
schemes, for example).

-Eric

Hilaire Fernandes wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm really want to help in developping a gradebook and especialy you
> Eric as you want to use GTK/Gnome + EDUML, and I can help you in the
> Glade, libglade & libxml department.
> 
> I don't really know at which stage you are but i will just throw some
> idea and remarks - they may not be accurate at all
> 
> It will be a good idea to separate the GUI of the gradebook from the
> core of the gradebook. We will define an abstract GUI from which
> specific GUI will be derived. This will make port more easy and will
> allow to have both a GTK & HTML interface. So the gradebook could be
> used as a standalone application and also as a kind of CGI in a
> school web server.
> 
> If you want to have a mutiplateforme gradebook, you may better
> choosing an interpreted language as Python (supported in Win32 &
> GNU/Linux), this will provide far better portability. Plus under
> GNU/Linux, libglade & GNUGettext is supported. Beside this, Python
> looks like an intersting language & easy to learn.
> 
> Anyway, whatever you decide i'm ready to help you. Do you have an url
> with information on your actual work.
> 
> Hilaire
>