Re: [seul-edu] directory of educational apps on Linux

[Michael Viron <mviron@wsdo.sao.uwf.edu>]

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Manuel Gutierrez Algaba wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, Michael Viron wrote:
> > At 07:05 PM 09/13/2000 +0000, you wrote:
> > >On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> > >> For the past week or so, Doug, Roman Malonowa, and I have been discussing
> > >> the possibility of SEUL/edu "reclaiming" the Directory of Educational Apps
> > >
> > >Well, I've had a definetely good idea to ease and allow participation
> > >of people in maintaining Web sites like Seul. 
> > >Moreover this would an application suitable to be playable with
> > >children to interest them in Web publishing.
> > >
> > >Moreover it's an idea easy to do and with unknown possibilities.
> > >
> > >The idea :
> > >"
> > >Email ---> Bot (---> Human reviewer ) ---> Webpage
> > >
> > >Ok, first forget all your ideas about "static" files comprising
> > >HTML code. 
> > 
> > Actually, that would be ok up to a point.  It would be much better (since
> > we have php / mysql installed) to have it pulled from a database (much like
> > the General Education Online v2 page at http://wsdo.sao.uwf.edu/~geodev/ ),
> > and the online form automatically stores the info in a temp table for
> > review by the person responsible.
> > 
> > This allows the pages to latter be set up as separate pages--just by
> > modifying the sql code a little bit--rather than having to re-write a program.
> 
> Python is easier to handle than sql+php. Python can store
> persistent data without  required format. Zope could be useful too.
> But using "raw" python seems to me the most straightforward
> and simple solution.  Forms interface would be optional and we
> have the email-based parameter-passing as the "low level" way
> of communication among the parties. 
Not necessarily--I did a complete sql / php website in a matter of
hours.  The main problem is that with python you would have to re-code the
program should you wish to break the sections into separate pages (which
will happen sooner or later, as people generally don't like to scroll
through 11 pages of stuff)--with php, you don't have to (you could
easily modify the sql query, as I said earlier)--and it would
auto-update as items were added to the site by the reviewers.

PHP / MySQL also makes updates much easier--and being able to do most of
the stuff online is a plus, because you do not have to give shell accounts
to the people that are maintaining it.

Structure would not be that difficult--again, I've ocassionally fully
planned, developed, and deployed php / sql based pages in a matter of
hours (such as the geodev site).

My .02,

Mike

> 
> I don't know how many techies are in this list, but if there's
> anyone, he can confirm that what I'm proposing is 
> very easy to do. Besides, most of the times
> lots of effort is spent in discussion about designing data or 
> structure. This proposal reduces that discussion to the design
> of HTML of web page. 
> 
> 
> Regards/Saludos
> Manolo
> www.ctv.es/USERS/irmina    /TeEncontreX.html   /texpython..htm
> /pyttex.htm /cruo/cruolinux.htm ICQ:77697936 (sirve el ICQ para algo?)
> 
>   no brainer: A decision which, viewed through the retrospectoscope, is "obvious" to those who failed to make it originally.
> 
>