[Server-devel] testing out new packages on top of school server images

[Kapil Thangavelu]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:15:58 -0400, Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 14:58 -0400, Toby Knudsen wrote:
>
>> - Hardware requirements.  Will the OLPC laptop be able to display all
>> the Plone javascript in an acceptable manner?  Are the client-side
>> requirements too much?  Perhaps Kapil can recommend a series of Plone
>> actions to test on the internet.
>>
>
> I certainly expect it should; if it doesn't, its a bug.  Our browser is
> based on the development line of Firefox (i.e. well beyond 1.5) as we
> needed some fundamental improvements not available in shipping Firefox.

my concern was more as relates to the overall weight (size/number of  
requests) of a page and the processing required to display them, vs. the  
browser in use on the laptop, and if as a result we need to work on  
customizations to these skins/ui to slim it down for consumption on the  
laptop. i imagine some customizations will be needed soley for making the  
interface more suitable for the target audience.

i'm going to be playing around with a friend's olpc machine next week and  
i'll try to gauge some of that in person and report back here.

>
>>
>> - Packages.  Should Zope/Plone and dependencies be in the core OLPC
>> server distribution?
>
> IFF there is seriously interesting content implemented using zope/plone,
> it should be.  I will note that content that can be cached locally on
> the laptop is always more interesting than server only content, just
> because kids spend most of their time away from school, and are not
> guaranteed connection (though with our mesh, we hope/expect to change
> the network environment significantly).
>
> We need to come at this from the child facing services and content,
> which determine what technology is needed, rather than technology
> driving educational agenda.  Having said that, we do have some
> technological preferences, but on the server, this is less important
> than on the laptop where I18N, size and pedagogy of how kids learn
> computing rule our choices.

i understand the focus is education, but the deployment of tools to enable  
that is why we're here. i'm concerned with customizing the default out of  
the box plone site, which is setup of web content management, into an  
appropriate application for learning, to see if its a viable solution for  
olpc. part of that is understanding requirements specific to olpc's  
deployment and intent. as toby has mentioned plone has been used in  
several pedalogical contexts, like the educommons (an opensource ocw  
learning repository) as well as in deployment specific LMS contexts and  
collaborations.

regarding i18n, this is one aspect that plone excels in, i18n user  
interface (including RTL support), and i18n translateable content.

i'm curious of what sort of integration folks are envisioning between the  
laptop and the server. are we talking about automating  
delivery/synchronization of content from the server directly into the  
laptop's journal/activities, with a sugar based interface into a server?  
is that something we need from the start, or is a traditional web  
interface sufficient for an initial deployment?

thanks,

kapil