[Server-devel] [XSCE] End User Documentation / Basic Setup Guide / How to upload PDFs etc

[Anish Mangal]

I thought read also opened pdf's from the journal too. (Not sure if it
saves what page you were on).


On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:46 AM, Anna <aschoolf at gmail.com> wrote:

> If possible, deploy epubs rather than pdfs.
>
> You can always convert an epub to a pdf.  You can't easily do it the other
> way round.  Go ahead and search, the pdf format is a bane for people who
> use ereaders.
>
> Also, epubs open from the Journal in the Read Activity, where kids can use
> bookmarks.  PDFs open in Browse and there's no bookmarking mechanism.  So
> you're halfway through a PDF, shut down your XO for the day, then the next
> morning open the PDF back up and have to scroll to where you left off.  Not
> cool.
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:38 PM, Curt Thompson <curtathompson at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> In the short term, I just followed Anna's suggestion and put the PDFs in
>> a directory I made "/var/www/html/science".  I tested it out with the
>> Browse activity in the XO-1 James is lending me as a client and it seems
>> to work relatively well - opens in-browser, which is nice.
>>
>> Not super fast but the images/text load up within a few seconds and it's
>> scrollable with the buttons near the monitor (once you click inside the
>> PDF).  I'm considering whether it's worth it to extract each page as an
>> image and convert all these PDFs into essentially an HTML-based "e-book"
>> to make it more responsive.
>>
>> In the long term, I'd like to be able to train teachers in how to add
>> content.  If we can send them a USB stick with PDFs, for example, it'd
>> be nice for them to be able to simply copy it into place and enjoy the
>> updated content.  Would this be the case once I got Pathagar set up and
>> working?
>>
>> I'll also work on documentation when I can.  I started to write setup
>> documentation but the online install info on the wiki is pretty good.
>> What's missing (in my humble opinion) is what to do with XSCE once it's
>> up and running.  I'll try to make some time to document the things I
>> learn as I go.
>>
>> Thanks for the help
>>
>>
>> On 11/17/2013 12:05 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:
>> > On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 8:15 PM, Anna <aschoolf at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Pathagar is still a work in progress.  I'm not sure if it can handle
>> pdfs,
>> >> though.  Last I saw, it was just epubs.
>> >>
>> > By design, Pathagar will serve *any* kind of file. The file serving is
>> > done via HTTP (Can be apache, nginx, or lighttpd, etc). Here is an
>> > example of PDF: http://108.171.173.65/book/10/view and here's an
>> > example of epub: http://108.171.173.65/book/8/view Pathagar itself
>> > doesn't care about the file format, as long as the http server has a
>> > way (MIME) to handle it. As far as the Pathagar software itself is
>> > concerned, there are no showstopping bugs that I know of.
>> >
>> > A couple of notes on the *installation* of Pathagar, where we do have
>> > a bunch of problems:
>> >
>> > 1) The *current* version of Pathagar is borked. I haven't gone back to
>> > see where it fails or how, but there should be a prior version that
>> > works. There is also a version (patch) that apparently fixes the book
>> > edit and upload problem. I have not tested it. I hope someone else can
>> > take a look?
>> >
>> > https://github.com/PathagarBooks/pathagar/issues
>> >
>> > 2) There seem to be multiple deployment approaches. We have PIP, RPM,
>> > fabric, and the good old way of installing and configuring by hand
>> > (which is what I follow, because I haven't had the time to test the
>> > other methods). At the OLPC SF Summit, Jerry told me that they have
>> > the RPM part addressed, but the current bug (cannot add/edit books)
>> > gets in the way.
>> >
>> > Hopefully the latest patch can address these things.
>> >
>> >> For your immediate purposes, I'd suggest `mkdir /var/www/html/science`
>> and
>> >> put the pdfs there.  Then clients can go to
>> http://schoolserver/science to
>> >> download them.
>> >>
>> >> Anna
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 10:05 PM, Curt Thompson <
>> curtathompson at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>> So I've been tinkering around XSCE School Server for a while now - I
>> >>> have it set up with Internet-in-a-box via USB drive and I spent a
>> while
>> >>> trying to get my laptop to work as AP/server.
>> >>>
>> >>> I've also been poking around looking for basic setup info.  In
>> >>> particular, I'm trying to upload these ~36 Science Textbook PDFs and
>> I'm
>> >>> not sure where to put them, if I should just be copying them to some
>> >>> directory (etc/Moodle or etc/pathagar or /library/pathagar/media?) or
>> >>> uploading them via one of these systems.  Any advice on which method
>> is
>> >>> best?
>> >>>
>> >>> I've looked around the Wiki but I can't find anything like a basic
>> setup
>> >>> guide (such as a reference that could be used by teachers, students,
>> >>> and/or volunteers in the field.)  Is there such a guide?
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>
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