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Martin Langhoff wrote:
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cite="mid:46a038f90806060742s7da4e987s5f51fbe129201ede@mail.gmail.com"
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<pre wrap="">Hi Greg!
On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 9:05 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:gregmsmi@cisco.com"><gregmsmi@cisco.com></a> wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Thanks to Wad and Martin for uncovering the OS problem!
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Yes - that's a pretty important thing. And leads into a second thing
that is tricky - if you want Edublog to work on both infrastructures
(Ceibal's school server and the standard XS) we need some
coordination. Otherwise you'll end up with htings that work only on
one.
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">1 - Tarun gets the three main GUI pages proto-typed and posted for
comment. Focus on Apache + PHP then XML/RPC call from EduBlog to Blog
host. Don't worry about the DB right now.
</pre>
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cite="mid:46a038f90806060742s7da4e987s5f51fbe129201ede@mail.gmail.com"
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<pre wrap="">If you go down this path you are turning your back on my
recommendations. I can't really help much, and it will be *much*
harder to get it on the XS.
You are doing some fantastic thinking on the product side of Edublog -
perhaps you could get the programmers discussing the technical aspects
on this list, with me directly? I am more than happy to mentor and
help.
</pre>
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Well, I suppose I am the main programmer for this right now =). I'm
fairly new and interning, so your help and guidance is much appreciated!<br>
<br>
I think Greg only wants the prototype GUI to get feedback from users
and have a testbed for the main portion of the code to post to other
blog sites on the internet. Its mostly an independent API so I see no
reason that just plopping it from the prototype GUI into Moodle's blog
facilities should pose much of a difficulty. It just lets us get user
feedback faster.<br>
<br>
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<pre wrap="">Purpose
- This will prove the concept of taking an Internet tool (blogger.com)
and making it usable by kids and manageable by teachers. It will also
show how to build a "web app" for deployment on the XS.</pre>
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<pre wrap="">
And here you have your XS architect telling you: you don't write new
web apps for the XS. To build a "web app" you add take something that
exists, is secure, scalable, solid, maintainable, etc, and you extend
it or tweak it.
</pre>
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I thought the plan is, indeed, to tweak a little bit of client side
code to make Moodle blog easier to use and add the features to post to
internet blog sites. I think the three pages just serve to augment the
front end, so kids can go directly there and not have to log into
Moodle, etc. Aside from the simple front end, and the scripts to post
to internet blog sites, everything else uses existing code.<br>
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<pre wrap="">
Want it *really* easy? Turn this plan into
- install moodle (trivial!)
- read through the code of the blog facility
- add a "forward blog post" feature to moodle's blog (there, you are
ready for early deployments)
- simplify UI a bit (which we have to do anyway)
</pre>
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<blockquote
cite="mid:46a038f90806060742s7da4e987s5f51fbe129201ede@mail.gmail.com"
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<pre wrap=""> - profit!
the "forward blog post" feature, if well done, can get integrated
upstream. And it's a simple thing - all the needed facilities are in
place, at most we'll need an additional column in a table.
One of the most common rookie programmer errors is to write your own
thing. Easy to get started, impossible to reach the goals. Don't makeadd
this mistake - what we want here is to reach the goal. The "easy
start" is only apparently easy.
</pre>
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Having made that mistake before, I agree with you completely!<br>
<br>
I propose to approach this in the following manner:<br>
1) Prototype the 3 pages quickly so we can get feedback. Backend will
use Moodle's blog facility (hope it has a clean API so I don't have to
deal with altering the tables directly).<br>
2) Finish the script for one internet blog site, taking care to make
the API easy so other blog sites can be added without too much confusion<br>
3) Stick it into Moodle<br>
4) Modify the Moodle UI so it basically does the same thing as the
prototyped pages and looks the same<br>
<br>
Do you think that is a good approach?<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
Tarun<br>
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