Forum OpenACS Q&A: Quick thought

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1: Quick thought
Posted by Mat Kovach on 07/19/01 06:01 AM
Recently I've been working with a local LUG to setup a private game
server for them (okay, I'm only hosting it) and I setup a group on my
own testing OpenACS setup
(http://www.theshagster.com/groups/cluggame) so some people have show
interest in OpenACS.

Serveral of the people who have talked to me about it (I tend to let
them bounce around the server and look at things) and as they look at
other sites is about pulling certain info from the site and
displaying it.  Basically, like pulling a list of news articles,
polls, software downloads, etc. and display the "quick lists" (aka
slashdot boxes).

With the recent discussion about making the systems easier to new
people to use/implement the site, has anybody but thought to creating
a "OpenACS Code Snippit" page/repository somewhere.  Since one hurdle
in using OpenACS that I got from talking with them, is that other
than the code itself there is not a lot of quick hacks available.

While you can find some info in searching the bboards and looking in
the actual code, it might be worth it to create a small area (or tar
ball) which are just basic "hacks".  New people (and experienced
people) might find it useful to have that to look at as they attack
OpenACS.

Thoughts?

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2: Response to Quick thought (response to 1)
Posted by Peter Alberer on 07/19/01 04:07 PM
I think it should be more like a knowledge or resource database with a very flexible data model.
It should be possible to save various types of metadata and references to other knowledge items (for example code snippets) with it.
currently i am trying to develop something like that for a university.
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3: Response to Quick thought (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 07/19/01 10:20 PM
Well, the simple problem you've raised could be solved by a library of  portlets.  Then you, the person who puts up a site, could provide a suite of portlets that the user can choose from to customize their own  page.

Portal support in OpenACS 3.2.5 is very primitive.  In ACS Classic 3.4, it was improved somewhat - this is what aD's Oracle-based ACES is  based on and ACES takes an approach very much like the one I outlined above.  In ACS 4.x Classic, portal support is considerably better.  This has already been ported into the OpenACS 4.x framework.

Providing interesting portlets that interface to existing packages could be a fun way for someone to contribute code if they don't  have the time or inclination to develop an entire new package.

Portlets are self-contained.  Having a library of portlets would make available a lot of the building blocks needed to lash together the kind of "vertical application" packages discussed in other threads.

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4: Response to Quick thought (response to 1)
Posted by Jonathan Ellis on 07/19/01 11:43 PM
Where can I find more about portlets?  This isn't a term I'm familiar with.  Does it mean an encapsulated way to access parts of a module's functionality, like photo.net extracting the most recent N bboard posts and putting them on the front page?
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5: Response to Quick thought (response to 1)
Posted by David Lutterkort on 07/20/01 12:37 AM
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6: Response to Quick thought (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 07/20/01 02:04 AM
Arjun just found some new packages in the aD ACS Tcl tree.  These include some packages named "bboard-portlets", "acs-subsite-portlets",  and some other similarly named things.  So there might be some stuff we can borrow from there.

There's also some intranet pieces and someone has posted a pointer to a partial 3.x -> 4.x port of the SDM done by someone within aD.

I'll try to poke around this stuff over the weekend and get some of it  into our tree.  Perhaps package porters can pick up some portlets to port - and Talli and Musea might want to look into some of them to incorporate into openacs.org at some point.