Forum OpenACS Q&A: Fresh ideas

This is a continuation of the points raised about how to move on with oacs from a newbie point of view. (in order not to hijack the tread about "why do you use oacs" I will try to create a shortlist of sugestions based on forum postings, so we end up with a clear picture.

Maybe it would help to read some of the documentation to keep from duplicating what has already been discussed on this topic?

https://openacs.org/doc/current/docbook-primer.html#docs-managing

That summary of more than 4 years of forum discusions took nearly 6 months to complete. I am certain readers experience information overload with it. Yet, it beats searching through the forums directly.

In short, most of the recent ideas have already been discussed in detail.

TO be helpful, one can:

1. find items not in that document that have been discussed since July 2003.

2. draft documents that meet some of the requirements in above url.

3. Consider incorporating the relevent requirements in any change efforts to this website or documentation.

For example, relevent requirements have been added to:

a. the wiki page: https://openacs.org/wiki/Questions in reference to the recent thread about changing openacs.org

b. quality improvement strategies discussion: https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=351331

I contend that although dotLRN has contributed much code, it also has caused many of the problems. We need to use OACS like it was intended when it forked off of ACS.
Don't add package dependencies to the core. If you can't code your package without affecting the core, don't add it to the core just because dotLRN needs it or whatever. It would be interesting to see how may OCT members don't work activly on dotLRN projects.

Also, there is no best practices documentation available at all. This has all been discussed before.

I think we should be maintaining a list of OpenACS newbie things to do, and the estimated amount of time someone might take to do it. Stuff like -
Test the patch for bug number 1234
Check if document to install forums package is accurate
Come up with a nice new logo

If a newbie comes here, and has a couple of hours, or a day, then she must be able to pick a task and complete it in that time, and publish the results.

Also, I think it is important for a newbie to have a person who can provide direction, if the newbie is interested in doing something, but is not sure what. I believe this is true for students, and volunteers who have not been part of open source projects earlier.

Is it possible for experienced hands to 'adopt a newbie'? I think this will be a better approach than just expecting them to participate in IRC chats.

There should be a place where I can say, "Volunteer available", and the amount of time I am willing to give, and the skills I already possess.

Nitish

OK, this one is not-so-fresh but still valuable, especially from point of view both Tcl/OACS newbies like me, new users like Joe and enthusiast like Robert

I feel this is what all OACS programmers should also remember when discussing about all those Tcl/OACS issues (OO and others)

this one post is the one which have "sold" me OACS and made me a big fan of it (Thanks Robert!):
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=274218

and here is something for all those loving LAMP and/or hating Tcl/AOLserver, but please, don't start another debate here, it is only for reference 😉

interesting analyze and also links to others interesting places:

http://tnx.nl/php

also interesting:

http://www.bitstorm.org/edwin/en/php-sucks/

http://lumphammer.net/articles/phpannoyances/

http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2002/papers/html/php/index.html

framework - better late than never 😉

http://www.zend.com/collaboration/framework_overview

OK. that is enough on this Saturday

Cheers,

Adam