Forum OpenACS Q&A: Top Ten Priorities for OpenACS ... what are yours?

I would like to add some thoughts that IMO are important to make dotLRN the leading open source learning management system (plus the reasons):

• Easy installer for linux distributions like SuSE. I don't think RedHat is interested but now that Novel and SuSE merged SuSE will become very strong not only in Europe but also in the US.
• A SCORM Runtime Environment (1.2 or even better 1.3). As a good starting point we could go with the client-side libraries shipped out with the ADLNet SampleRTE if licensing allows this approach. Thus the API adapter on the server-side has to be reimplemented in OpenACS.
• An extended/improved gatekeeper module for integrating external web-based applications like: SquirrelMail, Horde-IMP, Wiki, University Libraries or any other service that uses the same user accounts. The gatekeeper should be able to produce valid html/xhtml, forward session and cookie info, check if source is compressed data or not, allow usage of master-template (this feature already exists), a better rewrite proc, keep a registry for single-sign-on feature...
  
  This package is a small but powerful feature due to it's integration qualities. I tested it with different sites from static html to php-based applications. It works even with frames. Now - this is very interesting - when I tried to spread the news about dotLRN at our university the number one question was: Can we easily integrate our web stuff and make use of the dotLRN access control and packages. The answer: yes! Run a local apache+PHP+mysql installation with the AOLServer as its only client and voilá.
• A wiki based documentation system for users, developers and administrators - complete and open to registered users with version control. There are many valuable info scattered in the forum threads which could be aggregated in wiki pages. We could either create our own package or integrate with existing. c't 25 from 1st. Dec. 2003 made an excellent comparison of available wikis:
  1. MediaWiki (PHP-MySQL) - 68,65 % >20 languages, no CamelCase, very strong in scalability and usability, weak in documentation, relatively easy to install
  2. MoinMoin (Python-Text) - 1,75 % 8 languages, CamelCase, very strong in documentation and usability, weak in scalabilty
  3. PhpWiki (PHP, GDBM, MySQL, PostgreSQL...) - 1,59 % 7 languages, CamelCase, weak in documentation, strong in backend binding
  4. Twiki (Perl, RCS) - 4,49 % English only, CamelCase, very strong in documentation and plugins, weak in usability and scalability, most popular for intranets
  5. UseModWiki (Perl, proprietary format) - 16,32 % 18 languages, average, extremely easy installer
• Migration to latest AOLServer and PostgreSQL
• A consistent UI. There are UI changes (package-2-package) and (package-2-core). Also if we want to make use of the gatekeeper module with a master-template we need to have a unique CSS. Otherwise external designs will mess ours up. I tried it and it's a mess.
• Extended File Storage module so that the administrator can decide between the options to store files into database of with OpenAFS. Advantage: User can access and share owned files over IMAP, SSH and other usefull services.

Merry X-mas and happy new year,
Nima Mazloumi