[Server-devel] [XSCE] End User Documentation / Basic Setup Guide / How to upload PDFs etc
James Cameron
quozl at laptop.org
Sun Nov 17 23:33:20 EST 2013
What, Browse loses the reading position for a PDF? Let's fix Browse? ;-)
On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 09:54:22AM +0530, Anish Mangal wrote:
> 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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--
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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