Forum .LRN Q&A: Making EditThisPage work with dotLRN

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1: Making EditThisPage work with dotLRN
Posted by Sterling Ledet on 03/23/04 03:50 PM
I'm a rank newbie and jsut gettnig started with OpenACS and dotLRN.

I was able to get dotLRN 2.02 installed and functioning, but I'm wondering about installing additional packages from the OpenACS Repository.

I went into OpenACS Site-wide admin and installed the EditThisPage package from the OpenACS repository. However, it doesn't seem to add anything to the pages.

Is it difficult to install OpenACS Repository packages like Edit This Page into a dotLRN environment. Can anyone tell me how to make this package and other OpenACS repository packages work in dotLRN 2.02?

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2: Re: Making EditThisPage work with dotLRN (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 03/23/04 06:59 PM
The .LRN framework is very specific to the educational environment, with its classes etc.  Packages are integrated into .LRN via some "glue" code - an "applet" which knows how to instantiate an application package for a user, or a class, etc.  And a portlet which renders the actual boxes you see on the various pages.

It would be nice to have ETP integrated but it hasn't been done yet.

There is a very simple mechanism for adding text panels to class and club portlets - the "custom portlet" section on the class "control panel" page lets you create and/or edit them.

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3: Re: Making EditThisPage work with dotLRN (response to 1)
Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 03/23/04 08:28 PM
Welcome!

Also of note: the long term goal is to make .LRN as thin and  OpenACS adherent as possible and one of the things that will move it in that direction happens to be a rewrite of the portal infrastructure that Don is working on will make adding an OpenACS package to .LRN easier. This way other existing and possible developments (e.g. nice CMS package, a ticket tracker for user support, an image database, a directory, personal aggregator, a cool internal wikipedia type thing that is waiting to be built, etc.) will be easier to integrate in .LRN.

Also, ideally we will have a setup that will make it easy for institutions to keep portions of their homegrown infrastructure (that also depend on .LRN) up-to-date with the most recent release and contribute their OpenACS pieces back to the community by adding simple portal and applet code if it is needed.

Carl

P.S. Over the weekend I ran across this link http://www.berkleeshares.com/voice/  featured on one of my favorite OpenACS based sites (http://creativecommons.org/). Berklee has created one of the cooler "homegrown" OpenACS systems (that uses some pieces of .LRN) I know of. I have been breathing (and singing) differently ever since.