<div class="gmail_quote"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Cool. This is somewhat of a re-post of an earlier message to<br>
server-devel, IIRC. I'm glad you've done more research on the jolongo<br>
track as I hadn't heard of it before.<br>
<div></div></blockquote><div> </div><div>The developers seem highly motivated to do something that would work for olpc too, its basically their Master's thesis, and they seem to have a good working knowledge of how it all fits together. I hope I can get it working with jolongo on a regular laptop and see what is required to get it to work on sub size laptops... Although I agree that in the long term its probably going to be better to go the other route. In terms of Adobe AIR, I think it and Flex are open source, at least Flex definitly is, and I think Adobe is moving very seriously and very quickly in the open source direction. Talking to Adobe is always an option, or perhaps I'm dreaming a little :-)<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><br>
> 1. Open University Moodfle on a stick<br>
<br>
</div>As you say, I have been involved on this track. The work OU is doing<br>
is great, and it advances Moodle in various fronts that we care about.<br>
The overall implementation of it is not a good long term bet for us.<br>
It might be feasible short term but it will surely need a ton of work<br>
to fly, including a port to sqlite and a threaded or forking webserver<br>
in pure PHP.<br>
</blockquote><div><br>Ok, the sqlite part is pretty much done... at least there are 3 patches availble on Moodle.org which work for at least one version of moodle... in terms of a webserver, surely there's something already out there that is usable already... does it really have to be done from scratch? (I don't know enough about this, other than that there are a lot of light httpd servers already, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.)<br>
<br>I also found this, which you may have already seen, but its a very thorough breakdown of how OU sees the development process of offline moodle with step by step screenshots, flow diagrams, etc: <a href="http://hawk.aos.ecu.edu/mobilemoodle/v0.5/introduction-synchronisation-interface.html">http://hawk.aos.ecu.edu/mobilemoodle/v0.5/introduction-synchronisation-interface.html</a><br>
<br>and this, their offline moodle Moodle: <a href="http://hawk.aos.ecu.edu/moodle/course/view.php?id=22">http://hawk.aos.ecu.edu/moodle/course/view.php?id=22</a><br><br>and a set of instructions I found after doing it all myself manually :-)<br>
<a href="http://www.greenhughes.com/content/learn-go-openlearn-kubuntu-and-moodle">http://www.greenhughes.com/content/learn-go-openlearn-kubuntu-and-moodle</a><br><br>(btw... although there is no linux installer, it took very little time to replicate the offline moodle environment on an asus eeepc running its original OS, with almost no visible overhead... (apt-get install moodle apache2 mysql-server mysql-client php5 php-pear php-mysql was all that was needed) the XO was a little more complicated (needed an xampp installer) but has also little overhead, though obviously more than the eeepc, and hopefully I can try it on a next gen atom based classmate running sugar, to see how it fares... more data the better right?)<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
In other words, if there's anyone interested in doing the heavy<br>
lifting, I can provide a bit of mentoring on what needs to be tuned on<br>
the PHP & Moodle side. It will need a wrapper similar to the<br>
wikislices activity too.<br>
<div></div></blockquote><div><br>I guess I'm going to regret this, but I'll volunteer, if you've got time to guide me in areas I need. I've got lots of experience with Moodle including teaching, and had a php based web development company for 6 years, so I guess I should be able to do this... though I hate coding...<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><br>
> 2. Jolongo (meaning backpack in slang Latin American Spanish)<br>
<br>
</div>also a Spanish native speaker - but I didn't know Jolongo as a slang term :-)<br>
<br>
> adobe AIR<br>
<br>
That is possibly not redistributable by us :-(<br>
<br>
Is there a good explanation anywhere of what techniques are being<br>
used? My long term plans are to work on a disconnected operation based<br>
on Google-Gears or something similar. XPycom is included with Browse<br>
IIRC, but it's very hard to get traction ustream with an XO-only<br>
technology, so GG is much more likely to be a long-term viable plan.<br>
</blockquote><div><br>Here is what they say about Jolongo development (note, interestingly they are using sqlite...):<br><br>Our program is entirely programmed in Adobe Air (open source) and we are using some <a title="Links to interesting resources: PHP" href="http://moodle.org/mod/glossary/showentry.php?courseid=5&concept=PHP" target="_blank">PHP</a> code (that will also be freely available) to connect our offline <a title="Glossary of common terms: SQL" href="http://moodle.org/mod/glossary/showentry.php?courseid=5&concept=SQL" target="_blank">SQL</a>ite <a title="Glossary of common terms: Firebird" href="http://moodle.org/mod/glossary/showentry.php?courseid=5&concept=Firebird" target="_blank">Database</a> to our online <a title="Glossary of common terms: MySQL" href="http://moodle.org/mod/glossary/showentry.php?courseid=5&concept=MySQL" target="_blank">MySQL</a> database. The <a title="Project" href="http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=107" target="_blank">project</a>
is similar (with less features, at this stage) to Open University's
Moodle Offline Project, but we are not installing a modified Moodle
server to the desktop, just Adobe Air Runtime (free plugin) and our
program (Jolongo). Those, allowed us to maintain our <span>SQLite</span>
database (without the need for any other installations) and the
communications between this offline database and Moodle's online
database.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
If the AIR-based code can be ported to GG, then it could be a viable track.<br>
<div></div></blockquote><div><br>I've asked for the source code, so we'll se what they say...<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><br>
> version will be using sqlite, so that could even things out. Giving it a<br>
> couple of months will allow us to see which one of these projects is the<br>
> best adapted to usage by OLE and olpc.<br>
<br>
</div>For OLPC, I suspect AIR is a no-go due to licensing reasons. Gears, on<br>
the other hand, is definitely possible.<br>
</blockquote><div><br>I believe AIR, as I said before is actually open source, but Adobe seems quite cagey about mentioning this, as opposed to Flex which they openly say is open source...<br></div></div><br>Open University has a LOT of content and material concerning offline moodle and it makes sense to colaborate with them as much as possible.<br>
<br>Kind Regards,<br>David Van Assche<br>