RE: [seul-edu] Comprehensive Student Management

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

"Michael S. Williams" wrote:

> We need programs that
> are up to date, functional and easy to use:  Student Mngmnt, Library
> Automation, Cafeteria Mngmnt and Accounting, hopefully SIF compliant( or
> variation thereof). This would pave the way for linux on the desktops by
> gaining the trust of administrators and teachers with functional, stable
> tools.
>

We looked into SIF quite a while ago and realized that it was being driven
by the large software companies and was effectively closed to input from
grass-roots organizations (like us).  Bruno Vernier had been working on
EduML (you can find out more about it from our projects page
<http://www.seul.org/edu/projects.html>) for a while, which covered much the
same concepts as SIF.  We encouraged people to write software that used
EduML either as the native data format or as an import/export option.  I
know that Eric Sandeen's Grader was planning to do just that.  I think
development of EduML may have stalled; Bruno was talking about possibly
making EduML into an OSS gateway to SIF.  Some of this discussion should be
in the mailing list archives at <http://grader.sourceforge.net>.  Bruno,
where does EduML stand, and should it be considered for this effort?

--
Doug Loss                 God is a comedian playing
Data Network Coordinator  to an audience too afraid
Bloomsburg University     to laugh.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Voltaire