Forum OpenACS Development: OpenACS - The book

Collapse
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Faizal and myself have started the effort of compiling the wealth of information about OpenACS development into a more structured document which I labeled "OpenACS - The book" and which should be written collaboratively in the Wiki at https://openacs.org/wiki/OpenACS%20-%20The%20Book.

Okay, let's be precise. Faizal is reading all the documents there are, trying to understand how to develop with OpenACS, while I just had the idea that, if he is doing it anyway (the reading I mean), he might just as well try to compile it and we could all structure and reword it into something more pleasant to read / go through for developers.

Which reminds me. This book is targeted to developers, not users.

Therefore I'd like to ask all of you to go to the wiki and just post URLs or passages of text where information can be found, especially if you had a question and got it answered, put it onto the wiki so we could structure Forum Postings as well as IRC chats (copy paste is fine, don't worry about proper wording, this will come later).

Collapse
3: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Why don't you use the documentation at openacs.org/doc and improve it?

To improve the documentation you would first have to know docbook fairly well. Then there are the additional steps of compiling the information and putting it up somewhere. Docbook is a great method for actually writing the book in the end, but for the moment, where all we need is an easy way to collaborate and collect documentation from various places, docbook is overkill.

Should the documentation become obsolete?

No definitely not, it is after all one of the wealth of information. Sadly, it has not been update for quite some time and things have evolved since then. Our goal is primarily to provide up to date information in a structured way that makes it easier for new developers to pick up OpenACS (and the reference documentation is not written in the best style to achieve this, in my opinion).

How should the book differ?

Using real world examples to tackle common development problems as a guideline we should introduce the user to OpenACS. Much like the notes tutorial, but with more information on each of the various parts and deep links into forum postings, the OpenACS documentation or other places where information is kept.

Collapse
2: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Al-Faisal El-Dajani on
Hello everybody, my name is Faisal Dajani and i will be working with Malte on compiling all the information which we can find about the OpenACS paltform to make it easier to learn. I was only recently introduced to OpenACS (about two weeks ago), and believing that it is a superior platform to build web based communities upon, I decided to start learning and using it in my own projects. There is a ton of information about OpenACS out there, but the problem is, it's very spread out, and quite repetitive among different sites.
Since i was going through a lot of documentation, tutorials, sites and other stuff, Malte suggested that we should gather all the information together and come up with a, book you may call it, that would help developers learn about OpenACS.
We sure need all the help we can get from you guys, any information you can provide, links, material, tutorials, anything, plus any suggestions you have would be highly appreciated.
Thanx in advance.
Collapse
4: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Torben Brosten on
Hi Malte, Al-Faisal,

I've been working on similar efforts without wiki. You might find the FAQ/Glossary links and the links I added under the structure of OpenACS especially helpful.

cheers

Collapse
5: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Radamanthus Batnag on
Hi Malte, Faizal,

This is a great effort and will be very useful.

I have a question which I've gone through and I think most newbies also go through this question. I am not sure if this will fit into The Book so I will ask it here first:

What is the best way to extend the user data model? I like the idea of having ready-to-use user registration functionality, but I like to capture additional info from my users - for example, favorite pet, city of residence, etc. What is the recommended practice to accomplish this?

If you think this fits into The Book I'll scour through the forums and try to contribute this item.

Collapse
6: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
The best way to extend the user data modell is to use contacts and integrate the contacts package with the registration process. In contacts you can add a lot of attributes to a party (which can be a user). Then you could change the registration process to display the standard form from contacts for registered users and off you go. To access the various values you can use the ams::value function.
Collapse
7: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on
Malte: you and I started work on a table of contents for a book on OpenACS. Feel free to copy that to the Wiki:

http://www.rubick.com/openacs/book/

Also, any of the articles that I wrote here:

http://www.rubick.com/openacs

can be copied to the Wiki. If someone took the time to copy the chapters from the OpenACS book link above, and then added in some of the content from those OpenACS articles, that would be a decent skeleton for at least part of the book, and some of the content as well.

Collapse
8: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Torben Brosten on
So there's no duplication of effort, I'm working on a revision of Randy O'Meara's permissions doc[1], and will post it to the wiki "shortly".

1. https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=116231

Collapse
9: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Torben Brosten on
Okay, it's added here: https://openacs.org/wiki/subsite%20community%20roles

Still needs to be perculated into one process using composition_rels and any new features for clarity..

Collapse
10: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Mark Aufflick on
Malte, any plans to publish it as a paper Book? I like the way that the Postgres "book" is a snapshot of the online documentation.

If it is published, it would be ideal for the profits to be owned by an "OpenACS consortium" (name similarities to any other consortiums purely co-incidental :)

Collapse
11: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Good idea Mark and I think as well that the profits should go to the OpenACS foundation once it is established. But for this to happen we would first have to write the book, find a publisher and hope that people will like and buy the book.
Collapse
12: Re: OpenACS - The book (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on
I've moved most of my documents from rubick.com into the Wiki.