Re: Seating (was: Re: Gradebook development)

[Douglas Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

>>>MY == Micah Yoder <LYoder@cyberis.net> wrote at Thu, 19 Nov 1998 18:53:21
-0400 :

>I may have missed something, but I'm still a bit confused as to why
>you'd want to use XML for something like edulp.
>
>If you REALLY want to get the goal/progress info into other programs,
>either they could be made to read the DBMs or there could be a DBM->XML
>converter (I *think* someone already mentioned that).
>
The reason I was mentioning XML is that the gradebook/admin programs seem
likely to be using it.  I figured that the student's progress in the
courseware might be something used by those programs, so having it in XML
form already would save a translation.  I may be wrong that that progress is
something that is usually kept track of in this sort of admin software; I
don't really know.  If it isn't, then the info could be in any form that's
convenient.

>And do we REALLY want to use GNOME?  That will lock people into using
>the GNOME panel, and now that Qt is open source, it's uncertain that
>GNOME will be the standard.  (Personally, I'm all for both - there needs
>to be good competition, and even Qt's new license is somewhat less than
>100% ideal.)
>
Personally, I still prefer GNOME, but I understand what you're saying.  The
reason I was pushing GNOME is that Scholar Net is committed to it (is that
still the case, Arturo?).  It seemed like we'd need a GNOME system just
because of that, in addition to anything else we do.  So I figured, why not
just go GNOME?  And there's still a question about whether you can actually
have GPLed KDE software (I think it was pretty clear before that you couldn't
 legitimately, but I don't know now).  Roger, isn't one of SEUL's precepts
that anything developed under its auspices will be under the GPL?

>But this kind of thing can probably be done well just using the Tk or
>GTK widgets, then exec-ing the educational programs.  We should also
>look at programs that will be dependent on edulp - what will be best for
>them?  As it is, the only thing they have to do is read arguments and
>re-exec edulp when they're done, passing the completed level as an
>argument.  Would that be more efficient if we used a GNOME panel
>widget?  Would that lock out educational programs that wanted to use
>KDE/Qt?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I'd sure like to.
Does anyone have answers?

--
Doug Loss            An idealist is one who, on noticing that
dloss@csrlink.net    roses smell better than cabbage, concludes
(717) 326-3987       that they will also make better soup.
                        H. L. Mencken