Forum OpenACS Q&A: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal

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1: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal
Posted by Sam Nicholson on 01/26/06 08:40 PM
I've seen a number of announcements about portals.
I've seen a number of discussions about portals.
I've seen a number of questions about portals.

But I haven't seen any docs, answers, or other definitive guidance about what to do to use a portal, any portal, with plain ole 5.2.x
Further, any links that purport to illustrate portals on other sites don't seem to work.

Does such guidance exist?

Is specific help needed?

Cheers!

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2: Re: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal (response to 1)
Posted by Ben Koot on 01/26/06 10:38 PM
I tried to install portals on 5.2.2. and only got the response "file not found".

Seems a mysterious package, as that response has been there the last 3 years.

cheers
Ben

PS. on a more general note. Is there a defination of "file not found". What does that message mean?

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3: Re: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal (response to 1)
Posted by Sam Nicholson on 01/27/06 01:13 AM
Well, it is a service, not an application, so it can't just be added like forums or bugtracker. But I am equally in the dark as to how to configure its use.
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4: Re: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal (response to 1)
Posted by Nick Carroll on 01/27/06 01:30 AM
The portal package only works when used with dotlrn. It is not a service that can be used without dotlrn.
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5: Re: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 01/27/06 01:41 AM
Don Baccus was working on an update called "portal".

It will install on 5.2 but I have not found portlet packages that are compatible with it yet.

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7: Re: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal (response to 1)
Posted by Ben Koot on 01/27/06 01:52 AM
Maybe we need to dump all references...
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6: Re: Re: What's up with {new-,old-,green_and_kind_of_sideways-} portal (response to 5)
Posted by Sam Nicholson on 01/27/06 02:02 AM
I found that one, and (at least here) it will not install on 5.2.

This is one of the issues with code organization that I mentioned on this thread http://www.openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=337852

How in the heck is one supposed to figure this out without some organizational structure in the code? One might imagine that this would have been named dotlrn-portal at least.

It is pretty obvious that the package called "new-portal" is not going to get any documentation anytime soon, given the length of time that it has remained undocumented. So, without some codebase structure, one would never know.

I've been searching the forums for quite a while, and until Nick's message, there was never an explicit statement that new-portal is only for dotlrn. Now, I'm sure that I'll get 20-30 references to just that now :)

I'm far away from Boston, but I'm vaguely aware that Sloan paid for a goodly bit of development here in the process of building dotlrn. So, I'm mindful of biting the hand that feeds. But it is ever so clear to me that dotlrn needs a separate place in the code hierarchy. And that oacs needs to support a directory of related packages as a group in APM. That way it can be added or not as a piece, and it will be very clear where dependencies are.

Cheers!
-sam